I looked it up and found that it was a rare earth mineral, and that it had a number of uses. It was used as a catalyst to refine petroleum and as an alloy to make special metals. It was also used to make common everyday items like flint and carbon arc lights. But I wondered if Abel needed the mineral to harvest his human crops. Maybe it was a catalyst for the extraction process, and he’d run out of it. Or did he need it for a piece of equipment that allowed him to survive on Earth?
After searching for a few minutes, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to determine what Abel wanted it for. But it didn’t appear that he was sending me on a suicide mission.
So I moved on to preparing the blackmail package. It consisted of the pellets, the copper straw, and the recovery capsules. Of course, the missing piece—the most important piece—was the sample. If, indeed, it turned out to be a valid sample.
When I had the package together and safely in the trunk of my car, I told Jenny that I had to drive down to LAX. “I have to verify that someone’s mistress is flying in from Las Vegas,” I said.
She didn’t question me about it, but I suspected that was because she was more worried about Hannah than about my job. As was I.
“Please remember to call Dr. Eisner first thing in the morning,” she said, “and see if you can get an appointment for Hannah. Tell his office what happened.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it,” I said.
And I would, if I was still alive in the morning.
I got in my car and headed to Carson, which was where Abel wanted me to go, a city in the South Bay. My plan was to head to Northridge for the sample and test results afterward.
As soon as I got on the 405 and started the trek south, my thoughts went back to my assignment. I was to break into the storeroom of a high-tech manufacturing company located in Carson’s large industrial corridor, steal the cerium, and take it to Abel. For my abductions, he always gave me at least two days, and usually double that. But for this one, he wanted it right away, which struck me as odd. Why not allow me more time?
But the biggest difference with this assignment, and the biggest surprise, was that Abel was actually helping me. He had prepared everything in advance, rolling out the red carpet for me. The company’s exterior gate, which led to the building that housed the storeroom, would be open at seven-forty, ready for my arrival. And the storeroom itself would be accessible for a twenty-minute window, unguarded by security guards and alarms. Abel had also arranged for the company’s security cameras to malfunction during the theft.
In essence, I was little more than a delivery boy, picking up the cerium and delivering it to the alien. But that was fine by me.
The only downside was that, with nothing to prepare for, I had time to think about Hannah. I was tortured by the possibility that I was responsible for her abduction and for whatever had followed at Abel’s house. I’d taken on my new line of work—kidnapping women—to help my family; but now my family had become victim to it.
Unless this had been a coincidence. But I’d never know, would I?
I desperately wanted to know what effect the harvesting had on its victims. If Hannah had been a victim, had she suffered irreparable harm? The alien had never told me if there was lasting damage to the targets. And of course I’d never pressed him to find out. I supposed I hadn’t really wanted to know. I liked thinking that after I released the targets back into the wild, not only would they never know what had happened to them, but they’d also be just as healthy as if I’d never abducted them at all.
I felt less sanguine about that when it was my own daughter.
By the time I made it to Carson, I’d decided that when I delivered the cerium to Abel, I’d ask him if there was lasting damage to the targets. I’d try to get an answer before I blackmailed him.
I’d also try to get another question answered: Did Abel have other employees? I felt the answer was self-evident. If Hannah had been abducted—and I was talking myself into believing that she almost certainly had—then Abel did indeed have other employees.
Which made me even more disposable than I’d thought.
*
I picked up the cerium without a hitch, then headed back north up the 405 to Northridge. The 405 slowed near LAX, but after that it was smooth sailing, so it wasn’t long before I was driving through the Sepulveda Pass, down into the Valley. When the 405 hit Ventura Boulevard, I exited, as if I was planning to head back to my place or to Abel’s.
But I wasn’t.
I pulled into the parking structure at the Galleria, which was just off the freeway, and drove to the top floor. It was empty. I parked and walked toward the elevator. To the left of it was one of those concrete trash receptacles that stood an inch or so off the ground.
I pulled the gold card from my pocket and slid it underneath the receptacle, so that it was completely hidden from view. Then, after once again shutting off my cell phone, I got back on the 405 and headed to Northridge.
When I neared the Northridge exit, I went through what I’d tell Larry if the DNA test revealed something that might prove my outlandish claim. I decided I’d tell him what I’d told Jenny: that I’d lied about the ADM job, and that I was working for a PI firm. Then I’d go on to say that I was now working on a dangerous case, and that if anything happened to me, he should follow up on the contents of the package that I was leaving with him. He should investigate the contents himself and also have the LA Times investigate.
But if my blackmail plan worked? What if Abel didn’t dispose of me, but instead kept me on as an employee? Wouldn’t Larry open the blackmail package anyway? And I couldn’t take it back, because from here on in, my relationship with Abel would change, even if he kept me on. The threat of blackmail would become my only protection. So I needed to come up with a way to ensure that Larry would only open the blackmail package if something went wrong.
I exited the 405, and ten minutes later, I was pulling into the lab’s parking lot.
The woman was there waiting for me, lit by the blue-green vapor lights high overhead. She was leaning against her Ford Explorer, staring at her cell phone. She appeared calm, which made me think the sample had turned out to be a dud. There hadn’t been any DNA on that cotton swab because the alien had never touched that doorknob.
I parked, got out of my car, and walked toward her. As soon as she noticed me, she headed toward me. She wasn’t holding anything in her hands but her phone. No sample, no report. I was disappointed—and I could feel sweat beading on my forehead. How was I going to protect myself now?
When the woman was a couple of cars away from me, she said, “Let’s meet at the Petco over on Nordoff.”
“Why?” I asked, surprised by her request.
“Because I’m not an idiot,” she said. “Take De Soto to Nordoff, turn left, and you’ll see the Petco on the right.” She turned and headed back to the Explorer.
I wanted to ask her what was going on, but it was clear she wasn’t going to answer any questions here. So I headed back to my car, wondering why she’d said, “I’m not an idiot.” Had she felt I’d duped her in some way? That didn’t compute. How would I have duped her?
On the way to the Petco, I started to believe that I’d gotten her into some kind of trouble. Maybe she’d been caught running the test and she didn’t want to be seen with me. That was a logical reason for wanting a clandestine meeting.
I pulled into the Petco parking lot, picked out her SUV, and parked alongside it. She didn’t get out of her car, so I got out of mine and walked over to hers. Her driver’s side window was already rolled down.
“What’s up?” I said. “Why the cloak and dagger stuff?”
“Because I shouldn’t have been running a sample like that.” She no longer appeared calm. Her eyes were wide and wild.
“Why? What did you find?” I asked.
She pulled a sheet of paper from her pocket, unfolded it, and handed it to me. It was the lab report.
“Why’d you brin
g that sample to me?” she said. “I’m just a lab technician. Why didn’t you bring it to Cal Tech or JPL or—”
“I’ll explain,” I interrupted, “but please, first tell me what you found.”
“It’s all in there,” she said, nodding toward the report.
“What does it say?” I asked.
She took a breath, looked at me for a second, then said, “That sample had extra base pairs.”
“What do you mean, extra base pairs?” I felt my confidence returning.
“I’m not gonna give you a full biology lesson in front of a Petco in the Valley,” she said, “but DNA is made up of certain nucleotides—compounds—four, to be exact. And they’re repeated over and over again. But they can only pair up in certain ways. Sometimes there are mutations—mistakes—but that’s it.” Her eyes narrowed. “But there can’t be other base pairs. That’s impossible.”
“Are you saying there are other base pairs in that sample?” I’d hit the jackpot. My blackmail scheme suddenly had teeth.
“Yeah—I’m glad you’re following along. But I can’t tell you what those base pairs are. We’re not equipped for that.” She took in a breath and stared at me for a few beats. She looked frightened. Finally, she asked, “What’s that a sample of?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know.”
“Give me a break. You got it from somewhere and you were frantic to have it tested.” Her fear was turning into anger. “That’s why you paid me the big bucks. You have to tell me what you’re up to because you got me in over my head. Someone’s going to be asking me a lot of questions.”
“This was supposed to be confidential.”
“That was the plan, but this isn’t something I can sweep under the rug.”
“That was part of the deal.”
“Yeah, well, I was counting on that too. It wasn’t hard for me to shuffle some paperwork around and make your sample look like a legit job. But I didn’t know that I’d have to worry about the results.”
“Why does that make a difference?”
“The results of every test automatically get fed into a giant database. That’s how the lab makes extra money.”
“That sounds illegal.”
“It’s not. It’s part of the terms that everyone agrees to when they sign their release for a test. It’s in the small print that no one reads. But it’s no big deal—all the results are submitted anonymously into this database. And the database is just for universities to tap into. It gives them access to a lot of DNA tests that they can use for statistical analysis.”
I realized I’d screwed up. “So the results have already been forwarded to this databank?”
“You’re catching on.”
“But it’s anonymous, right?”
“It is until something like this pops up.” She shook her head. “Someone’s gonna see those weird base pairs, and they’re going to want to know where that sample came from. Then they’re going to track it down to the lab that submitted it. And when they find the lab, they’re going to track down the paperwork. And then they’re going to track it down to me.”
And Abel’s gonna track it down to me, I thought. If the murder investigation wasn’t enough for him to dispose of me, this surely was.
“Tell them I threatened you,” I said. Then I nodded to the kids’ car seats in the back. “Tell them I threatened your kids. But please don’t identify me. Tell them you never saw my face.”
“I don’t know if that’s going to work, but it’s better than telling them you bribed me. For that I’d get fired. And I need this job.” She let out a deep breath. “But you have to tell me where you got the sample. That way I’ll know if saying you threatened me will be enough to end this. How much are they going to want to dig into this? What’s this all about?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“The money you gave me means it’s a big deal. They’re going to want to dig deeper into this, aren’t they?”
“How long will it be before they contact you about the sample?”
“I have no idea.”
“Please tell them I threatened you and you never saw my face.”
“If I want to keep my job, I have no choice.” She stared at me and didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then she said, “But they’re going to want to know how I got the sample, and what happened to it, and if I gave you the report.”
“Tell them you picked it up here. In this parking lot.” I looked toward the Petco, where I spotted a familiar sight: a concrete trash receptacle.
“You picked it up under that trashcan.” I nodded at it. “And you dropped the report off there, too.”
She looked over her shoulder and took in the trashcan. “They’re gonna ask me how you got in touch with me.”
That was a tougher question to answer. And she knew it, because she began to rule out some of the options. “I can’t say you called me because they wouldn’t find a record of the phone call, and I can’t say you emailed me, texted me, or sent me a handwritten note because there’s no record of those either.”
“If these are university researchers who are going to track you down, you sure make them sound relentless.”
“I think I already mentioned that I’m not an idiot. I don’t know what that sample is, but I know it’s going to go beyond university researchers.”
I wasn’t going to argue with her—because she was right. So what could she say about how I’d first contacted her?
“You know what?” I said, realizing the answer was simple. “Forget about the trashcan. Tell them I came to you in person. Just like what actually happened. But give them a description of someone else.”
She let out a nervous laugh. “That’s not bad.”
“Just leave out the bribe and add the threat,” I said.
“Oh—I got that part.” She started her car and put it in reverse.
“Wait.” There was a big piece of information I needed to know. “What happened to the actual sample? I was hoping to get it back.”
“Not gonna happen. Once we test a sample, both the part we test and whatever is left over immediately gets discarded as biohazard waste.”
I didn’t like that answer. It meant that if I wanted to make the blackmail package stronger, I’d have to add another sample along with the lab report. “There’s no way to retrieve it?”
“Nope,” she said, and added, “I hope this works out. For both of us.” Then she pulled out.
I walked back to my car, lab report in hand, and climbed in. I was feeling good about the blackmail—the sample had come through, big time. But I didn’t like the sample sitting there in the databank like a ticking bomb. And I wished I’d gotten some of the sample back. Still, a bit of luck had come my way. And if this woman could hold her own when and if anyone asked her questions—then everything might work out just fine.
So I got on with my night.
I swung by the Galleria and picked up the gold card, then made a copy of the lab report at CVS. Afterward—before delivering the cerium to Abel—I headed to Larry’s house, thinking through exactly what I’d say once I got there.
I already knew I’d use the PI story to explain why I suspected I might be in danger, but I still hadn’t come up with a way to make sure Larry wouldn’t open the blackmail package prematurely. It would be a monumental failure on my part if my blackmail threat actually worked—saving my life and my job—but Larry went ahead and followed up on the contents of that package anyway. And, of course, I had no doubt he would follow up once he saw what was in there. It was the story of the century, if not of all time: aliens are here.
I weighed whether there was some way to use the LA Times to keep Larry from opening the package prematurely. But when I pulled up to his house, I still hadn’t come up with an angle to keep him in check. Nonetheless I moved forward, because I had no choice but to get the package into Larry’s hands before threatening Abel with blackmail.
I jotted down Abel’s address on the lab repo
rt, then added a note next to it saying this was where you’d find the alien with the extra base pairs. Then I stuck the report in a manila envelope, which already contained the other evidence. I sealed the package with tape, which I’d brought with me. And finally, I folded the copy I’d made of the lab report and tucked it neatly into my pocket.
With that done, I walked up to Larry’s front door and rang the doorbell.
Larry opened the door a few seconds later. “Eddie—what a coincidence,” he said. “I was just going to call you.”
“Really? What’s up?”
“I want to show you something.” He led me through the house with a sense of urgency.
“Another breaking story?” I asked.
“No, it’s the same one that was breaking when you were here a few days ago. The one about that old woman they found buried in her yard in Del Mar.”
“Oh…” A new wave of panic swept over me. Those beads of sweat appeared on my forehead again, and I wiped them off. This sounded like bad news. News that implicated me in the case. Why else would Larry have been about to call me?
“What’s in the envelope?” he asked.
“Something that I’d like you to help me out with,” I said.
He glanced back at me—and in that moment, I had an awful thought: he was thinking that whatever was in the envelope had to do with Rose David’s murder.
“Okay,” he said, then we both stepped into his office. “I want you to look at something first.” He headed to his desk, sat down, and clicked away until a video window appeared on one of his three monitors.
“The police are looking at security cam footage from businesses in Del Mar,” he said. “Footage from around the time they think the woman was murdered.”
“So they have a suspect?” I asked, as if I hadn’t been following every last detail about the case.
“Yeah.” He pointed to the monitor with the video window, then rolled the video—it was security cam footage. “Take a look at this,” he said.
I moved closer to the monitor and stared at the grainy black and white footage. I recognized the café, the Sun and Moon—and I knew what to pay attention to—but I played dumb. “What am I looking for?” I said.
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