Alien Abduction

by Irving Belateche

  My heart started to race and my entire body tensed, back on high alert. Had Abel left me a parting gift? Was I going to be arrested for the murder of Rose David?

  “Tell me exactly what’s going on,” I said.

  “Someone called and told me to burn the evidence. They wiped out my entire business and took my bank accounts down to zero. I don’t how they did it, but they did.”

  “Who called?”

  “How the hell should I know? He disguised his voice. It was electronic.”

  “I’m sorry about your business—it’s my fault. I should’ve never dragged—”

  “No, no—it’s back, Eddie. The business, the bank account. It’s all back. As soon as I burned the evidence, it was all restored. That’s what I mean by this guy has power. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was NSA. I mean, one minute everything disappears, and five minutes later it’s all back.”

  I didn’t say anything for a few seconds. I wasn’t sure how to spin this. And at the same time I realized something: I had no doubt that Abel had also taken care of the DNA evidence in the databank.

  Larry spoke up again. “Whatever you’re mixed up in goes high up the food chain, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah—that’s why I think I might be a goner. That’s why I gave you the package.”

  “Well, you’re not a goner when it comes to getting framed for Rose David’s murder.”

  “What?”

  “The case took a big turn,” he said. “Though after that phone call, I’m not surprised. After what that guy pulled, he obviously has the capability and access to steer the investigation in any direction he wants.”

  “Are you saying they’re not closing in on me anymore?”

  “They’re focusing on some guy with prior convictions. He was a suspect in some burglaries in Del Mar last year.”

  For the second time in as many days, a great sense of relief overcame me. Abel had figured out a way to fix the Rose David blunder after all. And though I’d never know what had changed to make that possible, I suspected that fixing this blunder was one of the things he’d been preoccupied with during our last two meetings. Not because he wanted to protect me, but because he wanted to protect himself.

  Of course, I also now understood that he’d been preoccupied with his impending departure. It had consumed him to the point where he couldn’t even pretend to be focused on me. He’d been focused on fixing the biggest problem in his life. The one that I’d suspected was haunting him when I first started to work for him: his loneliness. The lonely alien had decided he couldn’t take it anymore.

  He wanted to go home.

  *

  Over the next six months, I settled into my new life. I was the editor in chief of the “Dig Deeper” feature that ran on Larry’s website and on thirty other sites. The job came with insurance, so I didn’t have to lie to Jenny about where the money for our medical expenses was coming from. Better than that, Jenny was in remission. Or what was more accurately called partial remission, which meant the treatments were reducing the tumor.

  After Dr. Rainer officially delivered the good news, we celebrated at The Counter. Jake and Hannah only argued once. With Jake leaving for college soon, we all understood that this was one of the last times we’d all be at a celebratory dinner together. We all wanted to enjoy it, so enjoy it we did.

  Still, we knew we weren’t out of the woods. Dr. Rainer had told us: this was good news, but the future could still hold bad news. We understood that, and it made the dinner that much more precious.

  A week later, Jenny got another offer to work on a pilot, and she took it. Again, the timing worked out perfectly. One round of treatments was in the rearview mirror, and the next was a few months off.

  Summer turned into fall, Jake went off to college, and Hannah settled into her senior year. By then, I was well into my new job, which, as it turned out, I liked. I wrote in-depth stories for Larry’s news site and the other sites that were part of his loose syndicate, and I also commissioned and edited stories from seasoned journalists who, like me, had lost their jobs with traditional news outlets. And the aggregate views for these stories, across the syndication of websites, turned out to be good.

  One morning, while I was in the den, getting ready to edit a piece I had commissioned, I clicked on Larry’s website to see if another of my syndicated stories was still being featured. It was, but what caught my eye was a new story. It wasn’t the exaggerated headline, “Beverly Hills to Selfishly Keep LA Tourists to Itself,” that jumped out at me—I was used to Larry’s headlines. It was the accompanying photo.

  A photo of Abel’s house.

  I clicked on the story and found out that the house was being converted into a small museum featuring the history of Los Angeles. According to the article, the former owner, a reclusive and wealthy Beverly Hills native, had donated the property to the Beverly Hills Historical Foundation with one major stipulation: the museum had to open within a year.

  And that requirement was going to be met. The museum would open early next year—and I planned to pay a visit. I wasn’t interested in learning more about the history of LA, but I was interested in learning more about this wealthy donor. Maybe there’d be a plaque in the museum telling the public more about him. I wondered what story Abel had left behind. I knew that whatever it was, it didn’t include a digital trail—I had checked.

  When Christmas came around, Jake flew back from Northwestern. The university had turned out to be a perfect fit for him. He loved it, and we were glad to have some time to hear all about it. Jenny was in tears when we met him at the airport. She’d missed him greatly. I had, too, but I wasn’t worried about him like I was about Hannah. Hannah appeared to be in good health, but doubt lingered with me always.

  When I took her to see Dr. Eisner, I had insisted on talking to the doctor myself after the examination. Hannah had protested, but I didn’t budge. So she stood there, annoyed, while I spoke to the doctor.

  “She appears to be in good health,” Eisner told me right off the bat.

  Hannah shot me a smug look.

  “Do you have any idea why she might have fainted?” I asked. Though I knew it would probably be futile, I wanted to get him to run some tests. I wanted to know what Abel had done to my daughter.

  “At this point,” he said, “I can’t give you a definitive cause. But I can say that there’s no reason to worry. When we see something like this, the vast majority of the time it really is no big deal.”

  “I know, but I’m really worried about it,” I said.

  “Don’t be. A fainting spell doesn’t by itself mean anything. It’s the result of a sudden decrease in blood flow. It can come from a sudden drop in blood pressure, or from low blood sugar. If she didn’t eat enough that day, that would explain it.”

  “That’s what it was, Dad,” Hannah chimed in, irritated by my concern. “I already told you that.”

  “And I did rule out other common causes,” Eisner said. “Fear, hyperventilation—and I didn’t see any signs of dehydration.” He began to fill out a form on his clipboard. “But we are going to draw some blood and do bloodwork.”

  Great. That was a start. But I wanted him to run other tests. “Will bloodwork catch most of what could have caused it?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What about an MRI or genetic testing?”

  Eisner looked up from his form, but before he could say anything, Hannah spoke up. “Dad—what’s wrong with you?” she said.

  “I just want to make sure you’re fine.”

  Eisner signed the form, then said, “Let’s do the bloodwork and follow up from there.”

  Of course, a few days later, the bloodwork came back normal, so there was nothing to follow up on. But whenever Hannah was around, I watched her like a hawk, trying to determine whether anything had changed about her. I realized that this was one of my penances for what I’d done to those other women—the targets I’d abducted. After returning those women, I had div
orced myself from whatever the future held for them. I had divorced myself from whatever Abel had done to them.

  With Hannah, I could never divorce myself from that. So even during our joyous Christmas dinner, with Jake home from college, and with all of us thankful for the blessings in our lives, that was still on my mind. And it would always be on my mind.

  THE END

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  If you’d like to read more by Irving Belateche, please try:

  “Einstein’s Secret”

  “The Origin of Dracula”

  “H2O”

  “The Disappeared”

  “Under An Orange Sun”

  To find out more about Irving Belateche and his books, please visit his website.

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