Alien Abduction

by Irving Belateche

  And to do that, I had to accomplish two things. First, I had to get Abel to run interference for me, and keep anyone and everyone off my trail. And second, I had to get the alien to keep me on as an employee. Blackmail was the only way to accomplish these two things, so I had to get on with it immediately.

  Abel had to believe that his lowly employee had the evidence to out him as an alien.

  I quickly thought through my catalogue of evidence again, racking my brain for anything more to add to the pellets, copper straw, capsules, and swab. I came up with a few other items—like the strange chain of title to Abel’s house—but they were all circumstantial evidence.

  In the end, my blackmail threat really came down to the DNA evidence—if I actually had any DNA evidence. And that left me with a choice: I could put the cotton swab into my blackmail package for the LA Times and for Larry, along with instructions to have it tested, or I could test it first before adding it to the package.

  It was a no-brainer, wasn’t it? Abel wouldn’t respond to an empty threat about a swab that may or may not have his genetic material—and may or may not even exist, for all he knew. But if I could show Abel the test results, then my blackmail threat would have teeth. He’d see that I had incontrovertible evidence that would reveal to the world that there was an alien among us. Of course, this assumed that I’d actually collected genetic material from that doorknob. And the only way to find that out was to have the cotton swab tested.

  I turned off of Ventura and onto Vantage, then pulled into the parking lot behind the CVS. I took out my cell phone, but weighed whether to use it. I wanted to search for a lab that could test the sample. I never used my cell phone to search for anything that had to do with my assignments—if the police ever connected me to a target, I didn’t want my phone records to confirm the connection—but I figured this search didn’t have anything to do with an assignment. Besides, at this point, I had a much bigger worry—the police connecting me to a murder.

  But what about Abel? Just as I’d always assumed he monitored my computer searches, I also assumed he monitored my cell phone. Once again, I’d have to hope the alien would think I was worried about the police using a DNA sample to connect me to the crime in San Diego. I knew this was probably wishful thinking, but I was motivated by a sense of urgency. I had to implement this blackmail plan as fast as possible. The walls were closing in.

  I searched for the nearest lab under the guise of searching how long it would take to test a sample, thinking this ruse might throw Abel off the trail. It turned out that there were quite a number of DNA testing labs in LA. Many of them had specialties, like testing for paternity, or for ethnicity, or for genetic mutations.

  I decided on a lab in Northridge. It ran a large variety of DNA tests for a large variety of clients, from hospitals to law enforcement agencies to biotech firms, which meant it was more likely to have the capability to analyze a sample with strange characteristics. I also liked that it offered an express service. The service still wasn’t fast enough, but I hoped that if I offered to double their fee—and I was willing to pay far more than double—I’d get the fastest service available.

  Before I headed up to Northridge, I walked into the Bookstar next to CVS. I headed to an empty aisle, then slipped the gold card into a book on the bottom shelf. If Abel used the card to track me, he wouldn’t see that I’d driven to a DNA testing lab. I’d pick up the device on the way back. I also shut off my cell phone, in case the alien also used it to track me.

  Thirty minutes later, I arrived at the lab, during a shift change. Technicians were streaming out of the lab and others were heading inside. I parked in front of the building, in one of the spots marked “dropoff,” then headed into the lobby, where I stepped up to a receiving window.

  From behind the window, a large woman in her forties, wearing big round glasses, looked up from logging a package into her computer terminal.

  “Dropping off?” she said.

  “Yeah,” I answered.

  “From where?” She reached for a form.

  “What do you mean ‘from where’?”

  “Doctor group, hospital, or clinic?”

  “None of those.”

  She put the form back. “If you’re a cop, you can’t check a sample in through the receiving window.”

  “I’m not a cop.”

  She raised her eyebrows skeptically. “So where you from then?”

  “It’s a personal sample.”

  “We can’t take it,” she said, shaking her head. “You gotta go through a doctor, hospital, or clinic.”

  “I don’t have time for that.”

  “That’s the way it works, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  I thought about bribing her, but before I went through with it, I realized that she was the wrong person to bribe. Even if I had been able to bribe her to fake whatever information she needed on that form, I’d still need a technician to perform the test immediately. So my next move was to find that technician.

  “Okay. I understand,” I said, and headed back outside.

  I got in my car, pulled out of the “dropoff” spot, and drove deeper into the large parking lot, until I was surrounded by employees on the shift change. I parked right in the thick of it and eyed the workers. Some were headed to their cars, while others were milling about, chatting.

  I evaluated them, one by one. As a reporter, I was fairly good at picking up a few details about a person just through observation. I was looking for someone who’d jump at the chance to earn a large chunk of change, and it also had to be someone who had the authority to cut through the red tape and get the test done now, or who could do the test themselves.

  After about five minutes of quickly sizing up two dozen candidates, I decided the best candidate was a woman who looked to be in her late thirties, and who appeared self-assured as she spoke to a colleague. Her age and her demeanor led me to believe she was probably a technician, or possibly a manager, which might mean she was higher up on the food chain in the lab.

  And there were other things about her that helped with my decision. The woman’s hair was pulled back in a ponytail, not styled in any way, and she was wearing flats—practical shoes—and plain tan slacks. She also looked fatigued, and as she chatted with her coworker, I could see she was continuously inching away from the conversation, as if she wanted to get home as soon as she could. Her generic outfit, her desire to get home, and her fatigue told me she was almost undoubtedly a woman juggling work and motherhood.

  I got out of my car and made a beeline toward her. As I approached her, she finally broke away from her coworker and stepped up to a late nineties Ford Explorer—old but dependable; I’d had one. And when she opened her car door, I saw not one but two kids’ car seats in the back.

  I’d hit the jackpot. I was confident I’d picked the right person.

  “Miss,” I said, as I closed the distance between us.

  She didn’t react. She was focused on getting home to her kids.

  “Miss,” I repeated, louder, as she closed the door.

  She must have heard me, because just before the door shut, she turned toward me.

  I gave her a quick wave and hurried to her car.

  She rolled down the window.

  “Miss, I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, “but I was wondering if I can ask you for a favor.”

  “I’m kind of in a rush.” She started the Explorer.

  “I understand, but please give me just a few seconds.” I smiled.

  She gave me a quick once-over. “Sure. What’s up?”

  “Would you be willing to test a DNA sample for me? I’ll pa—”

  “Receiving is in the front lobby. Just drop it off there, and they’ll take care of it.”

  “I know, but I need it done right away.”

  “They can take care of that, too. There’s an express service.”

  “I understand, but they said it would take a week, and I can’t wait a week.”


  She took a deep breath; I was trying her patience. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s the best we can do.”

  “I’ll pay you five thousand dollars if you can do it right away.”

  That got her attention. She leaned back in her seat and stared at me.

  I went on. “This is a really private matter. I don’t want to go through ‘official’ channels.”

  She cocked her head, frowned, and glanced at my hands. I knew she was checking for a wedding ring—which, indeed, I was wearing—thinking that I was a philandering husband worried about paternity. From my Internet search, it was clear that determining paternity made up a big percentage of DNA testing.

  “Listen,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I’m not going to risk my job. Okay?”

  “Hear me out. I can pay y—”

  “I did hear you out.” She put the Explorer in gear.

  For a second, I thought I’d picked the wrong person. But then I remembered the most basic lesson I’d learned since getting fired from the Times: a parent will do anything to guarantee the financial security of his or her family. I was the prime example. And wasn’t that the primary reason why I’d picked this woman? Because I’d suspected she was a parent.

  “Wait. Please. What’s your salary?” I said.

  “What?”

  “What’s your salary? How much do you earn a year?”

  She shook her head, looked at her rearview mirror, and began to pull out.

  “I’ll double your salary. In cash.”

  She looked back at me and stopped her car; I knew the tide had turned.

  “You can have it now. All up front,” I said.

  Her brow furrowed with curiosity. “But I earn thirty-two thousand a year.”

  “Twice that is sixty-four,” I said.

  She gave me another once-over. “You’re saying you’ll give me sixty-four thousand dollars? Now?”

  “Can you run the test now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Great,” I said. “Stand by.”

  I headed over to my car, opened the trunk, and surreptitiously counted out sixty-four thousand dollars from the hundred thousand I’d packed for Mason.

  When I got back to the Explorer, the woman was standing outside it. She told me to hold on to the cash until this part of the parking lot was clear of employees. As we waited, I told her I wasn’t looking for a paternity test, but for something more comprehensive. And I told her she had to keep everything about the test confidential. She agreed, then went on to explain that there were different kinds of DNA tests, and that some took a lot longer than others.

  I wished I had done more research on what kind of test I needed, but luckily, the cash I’d promised this woman had turned her into a fount of knowledge. I asked her if there was a specific test that could determine if the DNA sample was “abnormal,” a term I used because I couldn’t use “extraterrestrial.”

  She translated “abnormal” to mean testing for specific genetic “markers.” Genetic markers referred to certain genes, some of which were used to identify people. After she explained a little more about genetic markers, it became clear that this test would definitely reveal whether there was something highly “abnormal” about the sample or not.

  I gave her the cash, and she told me to come back in six hours.

  *

  After retrieving the gold card from the Bookstar, I headed home, prepared to answer more of Jenny’s questions about the PI job. But when I walked into the house, she was talking to Hannah.

  I overheard them in the kitchen, and it sounded like they were in the middle of a serious conversation. My first thought was that Hannah was insisting on doing something crazy during the upcoming summer break. Last summer she’d wanted to go backpacking through Kenya—not with a tour group, but by herself. It had been a non-starter, but she thought she could bully us into it and had thrown more than half a dozen temper tantrums before accepting that it was never going to happen.

  I headed to the kitchen with the intent of bailing Jenny out in case she felt cornered. But when I entered the room, both of them went quiet.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  “Nothing. Everything’s fine,” Hannah answered. But I could see in her face that everything wasn’t fine. She looked frightened.

  I looked over at Jenny, hoping she’d spilled the beans.

  Jenny turned to Hannah. “It’s okay, honey. I understand that it has nothing to do with the job. I really do. You can tell your dad.”

  Hannah stared at me for a beat, then looked away.

  “I’m not going to get mad,” I said.

  “You might,” Hannah responded.

  Jenny moved closer to Hannah and gently touched her arm. “If I didn’t get mad, you know he won’t. He’s the pushover when it comes to you.” She smiled sympathetically.

  Though this didn’t elicit a matching smile from Hannah, she did look me in the eye. “I’m not overworked,” she said. “I just want to make sure you know that.”

  “I know that,” I said.

  “I’m not doing too much.”

  “I don’t think you are, honey.”

  “Maybe I didn’t eat enough. That’s all.”

  I didn’t understand what she was getting at, so I looked over at Jenny.

  “She fainted on the way to work,” Jenny said.

  My body went numb. A second later, that numbness was replaced with fear and panic, which I fought to hide from Hannah and Jenny. Had Abel targeted my precious daughter? I wanted to reach out and hug her, envelop her, and protect her. But she’d think I was overreacting.

  And I was, wasn’t I?

  It’s not Abel, I told myself. It can’t be. This was nothing more than a weird coincidence. The targets were always women in their late twenties or early thirties. Hannah—my innocent daughter—didn’t fit the bill.

  I finally managed to croak out a response. “Are you okay, sweetheart?”

  “I’m fine,” Hannah said, defensively. She’d heard the fear in my voice—I hadn’t been able to mask it. “I just wanted Mom to know,” she continued, “in case Mrs. Waller said anything.”

  “Why would Mrs. Waller say anything?” I asked.

  “Because Mrs. Waller found her,” Jenny said. “She passed out in her yard.”

  “So what happened exactly?” I said.

  “I was walking home from work, and out of the blue I felt faint.” Hannah’s tone was muted, which was unlike her. “I must have been near Mrs. Waller’s, because next thing I knew she was standing over me, asking me if I was okay. I guess I wandered into her yard before I actually passed out.”

  My heart was pounding now. This was Abel’s MO—my MO—and I wanted to kill him. My precious daughter had been drugged, hauled like an animal to Abel’s, stripped of something—I still didn’t know of what, but now more than ever I wished to God I did—and then released back into the wild.

  But who’d abducted her? Did Abel have another employee—one who targeted teens?

  “How long were you passed out?” I said, hoping I was doing a better job of masking not only my fear, but also my rage.

  “I don’t know… an hour and a half, I think.”

  This was exactly how long it would take for someone to drive her from our neighborhood to Abel’s and back, including the time Abel would have to spend harvesting.

  And there was another detail that made me think Abel was behind this: the Wallers’ yard. If you were going to drop a target back into our neighborhood, which for Hannah was familiar territory, then the Wallers’ yard was the best choice. It had a hedge obscuring it from the street, and it had a gate that opened onto an alleyway that ran behind the houses on that side of the block. Whoever had returned Hannah had undoubtedly checked to see if the alleyway was clear, then pulled in right alongside that gate and dumped her body in the yard.

  “Did you wake up near the gate?” I asked before I could censor myself.

  “Yeah—why?” Ha
nnah looked at me curiously.

  I shrugged and tried to come up with a reason for my strange question. “I thought you might have taken the alleyway as a shortcut.”

  “Maybe… To tell you the truth, I don’t remember much before I fainted.”

  “I think we should go to urgent care,” Jenny said, “to make sure you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine, Mom.”

  “Better safe than sorry,” I said, even though I knew a doctor wouldn’t find anything wrong with her—if this had been Abel’s handiwork. But what if it wasn’t?

  “I really feel fine,” Hannah said.

  “Can you at least let your father take you to urgent care in the morning?” Jenny said. “Or to the doctor if he can get an appointment? I’d do it myself, but I have my own doctor’s appointment first thing in the morning.”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Hannah insisted.

  “I know, honey,” I said. “But please do it, for our sake, so we don’t have to be worried sick about you.”

  Hannah took a couple of beats to look from me to her mom, then relented. “Okay. But it’s nothing.”

  I hoped it was nothing—nothing to do with Abel. But if that was the case, did that mean Hannah had fainted from some other cause? That idea frightened me as well.

  The gold card in my pocket suddenly vibrated. Abel was calling me with the new assignment. Was it a suicide mission?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  My new assignment had to be completed by ten p.m. tonight, which meant I’d have to hit the road right away to give myself time to pull it off. But before I left, I checked the murder investigation. Unfortunately, I discovered more bad news. Larry’s website had an update based on an anonymous source: the police were looking through the security camera footage of businesses in Del Mar. The update hadn’t said who the police were looking for, but the implication was that they had a suspect.

  I badly wanted to scour the Internet looking for more details, but I didn’t have time. First of all, I wanted to prepare the blackmail package before taking off for the assignment, and second of all, I wanted to check out the alien’s strange request. He didn’t have a target for me this time; instead, he wanted me to steal something called “cerium”—and I wanted to know what that was.