But something went wrong this time. The move wasn’t intended to hurt either of us, just to restrain her from touching me. As my fingers closed around her wrist, I felt the sharp poke of something inside her clothes. A hypodermic? I flinched away in anger and fear even as I knew that was impossible. At that angle, the needle would have to be sticking out of the back of her wrist. Wrist-mounted hypodermics only existed in bad spy movies, as far as I knew. Plus, I thought my finger had grazed something else when I’d touched her. More bumps that shouldn’t have been there.
I couldn’t come up with any reasonable explanation except that maybe Tsishe was a secret cosplayer under all that fabric, and she was wearing full Xena garb, including bracers with extra hypodermic mounts. That explanation seemed like a stretch for some reason.
“What the…” I started, but Tsishe had already began to flee. Black fabric streamed as she hurried down the street towards the Subway restaurant on the corner. She moved with more speed than I would have given her credit for. I thought about chasing her down, but I already had so much to deal with. Plus, something told me she’d find me again. I stared down at the tiny red spot on my palm where the mysterious needle-like thing had poked me and wondered what the hell was going on, but no answers came to mind.
CHAPTER 20
The work day dragged out interminably for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, with debrief meetings about the mysterious device in which we learned nothing useful, case meetings about air show ground security in which we made no apparent progress, and meetings that didn’t seem to serve much purpose at all but were longer than the other two types of meetings put together. The outcome of those should have been obvious, but someone had decided they were necessary anyway. I thought we should have a meeting to decide what to do to those people in retaliation, but I was too meetinged-out to suggest it.
When I dragged myself up the stairs to my apartment and saw Erich Bieber sitting in wait on the mat, I struggled to work up an emotion other than exhaustion. He didn’t appear to feel the same. He scrambled to his feet, grinned like this was the best surprise in the history of surprises, and threw his arms around me. The whole thing felt like less of an embrace and more of an outright attack.
I’d never been a huggy person to begin with. After losing Ronda, my need for personal space had only gotten more intense. I got twitchy when people came too close, and Erich had managed to set off every alarm I knew I had and some new ones too. It took effort not to pull him into a defensive hip throw or cold cock him with a blow to the chin as my instincts wanted me to.
Of course, he knew none of this. I remained calm with effort, because this was Erich. He’d seen the UFO. He’d come to Ronda’s funeral. By all rights, we should have been close friends now if not for the whole awkward semi-romance that I never should have encouraged in the first place. When I’d confided the whole sordid affair to Jenn, she’d told me to quit beating myself up over it since hindsight is 20/20. I’d replied that I couldn’t see very well out of my ass, and maybe that was the problem. She’d hit me with a pillow.
Erich eventually pulled back after holding the hug for what felt like way too long to me. But what did I know about these things? I only hugged Greg, Aunt Rose, and Jenn when it was necessary, and none of them were particularly emotionally demonstrative. The last man I’d been involved with at all had been Erich, and before him, the dry spell had been of Sahara-esque proportions. I’d been too busy trying to prepare for more aliens trying to pop my head off like a kid with a dandelion to even consider trying to find a match on whatever the hell stupid dating app was popular now.
“You’re late,” he said, but he sounded more amused than angry.
“I’m sorry. Meetings at work ran over.”
Of course, I left out the part where I’d completely forgotten that we’d had plans. But I still felt guilty over it.
“No problem.” He held up a couple of paper sacks. “I brought Chinese takeout and beer.”
Go figure, the takeout was from the same place that had supplied my lunchtime leftovers, but I didn’t have to cook, and I liked China Express. He’d remembered after all this time. Complaining about the choice would have made me feel like a grade-A ass, and not one with good hindsight, either.
So instead, I thanked him and invited him inside.
Getting situated with the food sucked up some time, but eventually, we were both parked at my little dining room table, munching away. I gave him a once over. He seemed very much the same as when he’d left, tall and rumpled, with the kind of nerdy good looks that I’d always thought probably made him a hit with the undergrad girls. His face had the slightly sunburnt look of someone who doesn’t spend much time outside, and I could see the outline where his sunglasses had been. It would have been endearing if I’d been in a state of mind to be endeared.
The silence between us stretched to uncomfortable lengths. I had to say something.
“So, how’s your mom?” I asked, hoping this wasn’t a poor choice of subject and she hadn’t died unexpectedly or something else tragic.
“Doing better,” he said to my relief. “She’s through with her treatments and feeling pretty good. Some of her friends from church set up a system to check on her so I could come home. I’d stay if she needed me, of course, but I really didn’t want to pawn my classes off on someone else this semester. The department’s stretched pretty thin.”
“Did they ever find a replacement for VJ?”
His former office mate had been hit by an alien driving an SUV. It sounded so fantastic when you put it that way, but I knew it to be true.
“No, academia moves at the pace of a geriatric snail. I think they start interviews next month or so. And in the meantime, we’re just expected to make do. I felt guilty about leaving when they’re already so short, but it’s my mom, you know?”
He shoveled pepper steak into his mouth, looking at me for verification. I nodded, because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Now that I wasn’t moving, I could barely keep my eyes open, let alone carry on half of a witty conversation. It had been a long few days.
It didn’t seem to matter. He went on as if I’d spoken. “I got pretty bored there, though. Not much to do while she’s sleeping all day. I spent some time on those message boards that VJ used to frequent. I figured maybe I could find out something useful.”
“Wait a minute.” I could barely believe my ears. “You went looking for useful information…about aliens…on the internet? I tried it, and it’s a bunch of ridiculous crap.”
“Well, yeah.” He flushed. “I know a lot of it is insane claptrap, but I thought I might be able to identify the type of craft we saw. Find out something useful about it.”
“And did you?”
“Well…no. But I did learn a lot about the conspiracy to cover up the existence of alien life on our planet. There’s this group called Majestic 12—”
“Which is a secret government organization dedicated to covering up events like Roswell. I’ve read all this, Erich. It doesn’t give me a single actionable item to investigate. It’s all theory and speculation and probably a bunch of bullshit on top of that.”
“What about the metal from VJ’s desk? The so-called Sankanium? Have you found out much about that?” he demanded.
Now I went cold. He’d shifted from the earnest yet awkward academic I’d grown to vaguely know into full on zealot mode. His eyes shone as he drilled me with questions, fingers clenched on the edge of my clearance marked Ikea dining table. A tiny scratch marred one leg, and I’d gotten it for a bargain. It had helped when I’d needed to replace all of my furniture over the summer, because the insurance company had been a total bitch about giving me enough to refurnish after the same alien that killed VJ Sankaran had broken into my apartment and trashed the place.
“I’m still looking into it,” I said cautiously.
“Well, let me have it. Maybe one of my friends from the…listserv can identify it.”
Som
ething told me he’d just censored whatever he was going to say. I didn’t like that one bit.
“Well, I’ll think about that,” I said noncommittally.
That seemed to satisfy him, at least for now. I changed the subject to my bowling pin murder, since the details had been all over the news sites and I was desperate for conversational fodder that wasn’t alien related. He seemed amused by the anecdotes, so I kept on going, and they got us through the rest of the meal. Afterwards, I begged off for the night, and I must have looked exhausted, because he didn’t even protest. He just gave me another too-long hug before showing himself out.
After he left, I ran myself a bath to try and relax, but it didn’t work. I felt unsettled and annoyed at how he’d changed. I’d gone from worrying that he’d try and reinitiate the flirtation from last winter to thinking that would have been preferable to the new Conspiracy Theory Erich, complete with Crazy Eye Action! It sounded like the kind of action figure Greg would collect. He loved the things. For years, his room had been a minefield of little guys with pointy hands that would stab you in the foot if you stepped on them. As amusing as the image of the Erich action figure was, his personality change worried me, and it took a while for me to fall asleep even though it felt like I hadn’t slept in years.
CHAPTER 21
The restless night didn’t do much to refresh me, but it did give me plenty of time to think about things. I ran them over and over in my mind as I tossed and turned and tried to fluff my pillow into the exact shape that would magically carry me off into dreamland, but I only managed to cram it sideways into the pillowcase. I thought about Erich and Hardwicke and Scorsone, about mysterious attackers in tunnels and women in burkas, and although I didn’t come up with any theories that miraculously made sense out of all those disparate things, at least I came up with a few roads of inquiry.
When I hauled my highly caffeinated ass into work the next morning, I got right down to it, searching the missing persons database for anyone who might have cause to work underground. Construction guys, sewer workers, anything. I’d follow that up with a visit to my friend Tony Joe, who lived in the box city under the Cherry Street Bridge. Homeless folks went missing all too often, and he might be able to tell me if anyone had done so unexpectedly. If my attacker had been willing to knock me out to hide whatever was down there, chances were decent that he’d done it to someone else. Like maybe a homeless person looking for shelter for the night. If so, perhaps this might lead me to the dead people in the ground that Tsishe had been talking about. The theory made some giant leaps, but I didn’t think they were out of the question, and it just felt good to be doing something. Even if the line of inquiry didn’t pan out, it might lead me to a theory that did.
Database searches have never been as easy as television dramas wanted to portray. In all the alphabet soup detective shows, the intrepid investigator would type a couple of things into the computer, which would then magically spit out the name of the one tailor who could have made the suit to match their fiber sample. It drove me nuts. In reality, most database searches were a long, slow slog through potential search combinations, using overworked software. The government might be able to pull off one of those instantaneous searches, but a detective in Toledo? Not so much.
Still, I had a knack for finding the right combination of words to coerce the computer into giving me the names I needed, and I approached the task with a decent modicum of optimism. Although I didn’t luck out first try, I felt confident that if the information existed, I’d get to it eventually, and I weeded through information with meticulous care, keeping notes on a Post-It to make sure I didn’t repeat my tracks.
I was still at it when my phone buzzed. Dr. Boudina’s receptionist reminded me that I had an appointment with her in five minutes and not to be late. I would have been offended by the supposition that I couldn’t keep my own schedule except that she made a point of inquiring after my health. Clearly, she was trying to be extra nice, and I appreciated that. Or at least I tried to. Plus, I’d forgotten the appointment, so I couldn’t exactly resent the suggestion that I’d done exactly that.
Before I left my desk, I set my computer to run yet another search and then triggered the screen saver. Hopefully the computer would come up with something this time and I’d return to answers after my appointment. Then I made my way down the hallway and up the elevator to Dr. Boudina’s office.
The department psychiatrist’s office sat tucked into a corner, its waiting room obscured by a row of giant jungle-looking plants. At least they seemed jungle-esque to me, but I had a black thumb and managed to kill flora and fauna by looking at it. Anything green and growing seemed wild to me. Boudina’s secretary offered me a cup of coffee, and the two of us chatted for a minute while we waited for Boudina to get off her phone call.
In Boudina’s office, I sat down for what I hoped would be a quick debrief. After Ronda’s death, I’d been required to attend sessions twice weekly until I’d convinced her and Scorsone that I wouldn’t crack under the pressure. Of course, I’d censored all of the alien stuff in those meetings, limiting myself to the details that I was able to explain away logically. I wanted to prove that I hadn’t cracked. That I could still approach the situation with the kind of logic and calm that had brought in difficult cases in the past. I’d fooled myself into believing it myself. I’d just happened to have seen a few things that I lacked evidence to prove, and I wasn’t about to talk about them until I did. Now that things had settled, I only checked in with Boudina every two weeks, and it felt more like a formality than anything else. Now, not so much, but I didn’t know what to say or do except barrel through until it was over and talk through my feelings about it later.
She sat down at the desk opposite me. Her eyes were keen as she looked me over, her blond hair pulled tight into a severe bun.
“So,” she said, “I hear you got jumped and left for dead in the dark.”
We’d gotten over the part where we minced words. I appreciated it.
“Yeah. It sucked.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
I could think of a lot of things I’d rather do, like scrub the grout in my shower with a toothbrush, but there was no sense in waffling. She wouldn’t let me go until I debriefed, so I did. I told her what had happened, and then spent a few moments admitting that I’d been frightened, because if I didn’t dig into the emotions underlying the situation, she’d just pry it out of me.
“Well, I’m glad you’re okay,” she concluded. “And how is everything else going?”
“Scorsone partnered Hardwicke and I. Was that your brilliant idea?”
I tried to keep the scorn out of my voice, but it didn’t work well. As far as partners went, Hardwicke had done a bang up job of making every mistake he’d accused me of. Leaving a partner high and dry? Check. Having lone ranger tendencies? Check.
“I sanctioned it, yes,” said Boudina. “Brad is struggling with guilt.”
“Well, he should be! He’s been an asshole.”
“Oh, not based on his behavior toward you.” Boudina sounded almost amused. “He thinks that’s justified. He loved Ronda, and he drove her away, and now he can’t tell her that he was wrong to do it.”
I thought about this for a moment. “Yeah, I can see that, but it doesn’t mean he should take it out on me.”
“I agree wholeheartedly.” She seemed about to say more when her phone buzzed. She glanced at it, frowned, and said, “I should probably take this. Annemarie wouldn’t interrupt us if it wasn’t important.”
I waved her on and watched her expression as she picked up the receiver and listened. She seemed nonplussed, but not as much as I was when she held it out to me.
“It’s for you,” she said. “An emergency.”
When I took the phone from her, I was proud to see that my hand didn’t shake, but I sure was nervous. An emergency could take a lot of forms that I could think of, none of them good. But my voice remained steady as I spoke my hell
o and waited for the bomb to drop. When it came, it wasn’t anything I’d expected.
“Detective Vorkink?” It took me a moment to place the voice, and then I was even more alarmed. Sheila wasn’t the kind of woman who played practical jokes. If she said it was an emergency, she meant it. “You need to come to the lab immediately. Now.”
She sounded angry and frightened, and I couldn’t begin to imagine what could do that to unflappable, logical Sheila. I barked out a promise that I was on my way, made a hurried excuse to Dr. Boudina, and was out the door in seconds.
CHAPTER 22
When I raced into the lab after Sheila’s urgent call for help, I found myself face to face with a trio of unmistakable G-men. If the dark suits and identical brush cuts weren’t a dead giveaway, the aura of asshole entitlement sold me on the concept. I’d worked a few cases with the FBI, and most of the Fibbies I’d met didn’t treat local law enforcement particularly well. I remember one time I was working a murder case that they’d tried unsuccessfully to pin on an interstate serial killer, and the Fibbie who came to investigate told me I was only allowed to do three things: give him restaurant recommendations, make copies of my files for him, and stay the hell out of his way. I took it personally until one of his assistants explained that he treated all local PD that way. Then I just made a habit of spitting in his coffee and holding my tongue until the bastard was gone.
I’d also met some really terrific Feds—like that assistant—who’d worked to balance the scales a little. One look told me these guys didn’t fall into that category. I wasn’t sure what clued me in. Perhaps it was the look of superiority plastered across all three G-man faces, or maybe it was the fact that they had some of Sheila’s specimen bags in hand and were absconding with them like Bonnie and Clyde on their way out of the bank with their latest score.
Unidentified Flying Suspect (Illegal Alien Book 2) Page 12