by Hunt, Jack
Sitting behind the wheel, Brody rested an elbow on the door of his black 4 x 4 truck, lifted his hat and wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. He caught his reflection in the side mirror. At forty-five he was beginning to show his age. There were a few more lines at the corners of his eyes, and some strands of gray streaking his black hair. Brody ran a hand over his clean-shaven jaw and gazed out across the barren Chihuahuan desert of West Texas just on the outskirts of Marfa. The small town with just over two thousand people had been home for the past four years. He’d grown up in Alpine, a neighboring town, thirty minutes to the east. It was similar but different in many ways. Marfa was an oddball town full of hipsters and artists, in the middle of nowhere, literally. It was situated between the Davis Mountains and Big Bend National Park, three hours from the nearest airport in El Paso, and a good twenty miles from surrounding towns. It wasn’t exactly a hub of activity except for on the weekends. Tourists, artists and commuters passed through, but occasionally it was those who were lost. Back when he was working with the Presidio County Sheriff’s Office, he’d considered taking a position with Alpine’s department but turned it down once the City of Marfa decided to cut ties with the county after using their law enforcement services for ten years. Fortunately, as fate would have it, Marfa officials decided to form their own police department and he’d been given the first kick at the can of being the chief. Now, there was him and four officers, and in some ways he liked that. It felt like a tight-knit family.
Brody breathed in the humid air.
He’d parked out by Marfa Viewing Area, just off US-90. It was a famous observation point for taking in the mysterious Marfa Lights, an unexplained phenomenon that had put Marfa on the map. Hell, they’d even added to the badge on his arm the words: Home of the mystery lights. He exhaled hard and gazed out. The sandstone, cylindrical adobe structure was a relic that once held good memories — shared ones. Now it only made him feel empty. He sighed again and tossed the divorce papers on the passenger seat and took another swig of his coffee. Screw it. It can wait. Twenty-four years is a long time, another day won’t hurt.
His thoughts shifted to the missing woman, the reason he was there.
It had been five days since the college student had gone missing, and they were no further ahead in finding her. A few tips had come in but they hadn’t panned out. In fact, diving into her history had produced almost nothing.
No ATM withdrawals. No cell phone activity. No posts on social media.
In today’s modern age that was unheard of.
The situation was dire, that was for sure, and he wasn’t holding out hope. His gut told him she was probably buried out there in the desolate desert beneath the Chinati Mountains. It would have been easy for anyone to drive out and dump a body in a shallow grave and no one would be the wiser. Few people ventured out there, and ranchers generally only had cameras set up to overlook livestock, not miles of desert.
Viola Ricci, twenty-one, hadn’t shown up for class at Sul Ross State University on Monday. Although she’d been studying in the neighboring town, her family was from Marfa. They were good people, hard-working, the kind of folk that would have given you the shirt off their backs. Her father Martin Ricci had been assisting where he could and many of the students and residents had rallied together to form search teams that would comb the Mitchell Flat and the vast region around both towns. Meanwhile Brody had been working closely with Alpine Police as they conducted interviews with friends, family and a former boyfriend because she had simply disappeared into thin air. They had already gone through every scenario. Was she under stress at college? Had she spoken about wanting to harm herself or run away? Did any of her friends notice her mood change? Were there any recent changes in her relationship with her ex? There was no connection they could make, though Marfa and Alpine were currently scrutinizing the ex-boyfriend.
That was what he’d been doing that morning, speaking with the chief of Alpine as a lead had come in from a young couple who had been out at the observation area hoping to see the lights. They said they saw a truck out near the base of the mountains. They wouldn’t have been the first. It was common to see glowing lights in the air and on the ground, and because distance was a hard thing to judge, it would have been easy to mistake the lights for a vehicle.
An officer from Alpine and the young couple were meant to meet him there. As he waited, he glanced at the clock. It was nearly the top of the hour so he turned on the radio and tuned into Marfa Public Radio to catch the latest town news. Emerick Jones’ voice came blasting out like a foghorn.
“… And that tune goes out to Sandra Andrews from her grandson. Have a wonderful day from all of us at here at the station. Now on to the news. Okay, folks, while I don’t like to be a buzz kill, I’ve got to share some sad news about a good friend of mine — Bob Lincoln. While you might not recognize the name, you would probably recognize his face if you were one of the many people that bought a vehicle at Fitzgerald Auto Sales. It’s with great sadness that I have to let you know that he passed away. Anyone who has been watching or reading the news will be aware of the animal attack at El Paso Zoo. Now of course, we don’t like to speculate and we must be sensitive to the family at this time, but his son Jason reached out to us to make it clear that his father was a good man who had no history with drinking or drugs, so any rumors that say otherwise should be disregarded. I can certainly account for Bob myself. He was a straight and narrow kind of guy, a churchgoer, the kind of man that knew the value of family above all things. Anyway, his funeral will be held this afternoon at the Alpine Memorial Funeral Home. It’s a private funeral for family only. So from us here at Marfa Public Radio, Jason and family, you are in our prayers and thoughts. And Bob, Godspeed.”
Nick had told him about the incident. He couldn’t believe it himself. The few times he’d met Bob, he too saw him as someone with a good head on his shoulders. He didn’t strike him as a man with mental issues either.
Brody glanced out and saw a police cruiser pull in, kicking up dust. He switched off the radio and hopped out, removed his hat and wiped sweat from his brow. When the officer got out, Brody smirked.
“Officer Ray Gottman.”
He gave a half-assed salute. “Chief.”
The two of them went way back. Both had attended academy together and worked for the county before taking their respective positions in different towns. It had been a while since they’d seen each other, though Brody knew he was working for Alpine. Ray made his way over, briefly glancing back at the couple in the rear of his cruiser. There was another officer in the passenger side.
“Just a quick word before we get started.”
“Sure,” Brody said leaning against his truck. Ray eyed it and smiled. “Nice ride. Did the department pay for that?”
“No, last month’s lottery ticket did,” he said with a grin. “But don’t be jealous, the air conditioning packed it in a couple of days ago. Anyway, what have we got?”
“They’re a little skittish to talk. It took us a while just to get what we did out of them. They think they can pinpoint the location of where they saw the vehicle’s headlights, but they don’t want anyone to know they’ve helped. Oh, and they don’t want to rehash what they were doing out there.”
“I think that’s self-explanatory.”
While many came out to observe the lights, it was also a common spot for young couples to park their cars and get all hot and heavy. Gottman jerked his head towards the cruiser and the other officer let the couple out. The couple couldn’t have been more than twenty. College material, wet behind the ears and scared by the looks of it. The guy had a dark mustache, and stubble. He was wearing flip flops, jeans and a lettered green T-shirt, and his girlfriend looked like she was on her way to Burning Man or Woodstock. She had dark hair in braids, with a flowery cut blouse and hip-hugging jeans with bell bottoms.
“Mike, Cecilia, this is Chief Brody Jackson.”
“Hey, how are you?” Brody said extending a
hand and attempting to put them at ease. It wasn’t easy for witnesses to agree to come forward. Far too often the threat of retribution for saying anything kept lips sealed.
Mike nodded hard but said nothing. Cecilia stuck her hands in her back pockets and looked around nervously.
“How about you take me back to that night and what you saw? Can you do that?”
Mike nodded and made a gesture to the structure.
Colonel Nichol Lynch put the phone down and squeezed the bridge of her nose. She got up from her desk and went into the adjoining washroom and splashed some cold water over her face. As it dripped off her chin she stared into the small mirror and ran a hand over it. She couldn’t believe it had happened. After working for the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick for the better part of nine years, she was used to being called in to investigate outbreaks. Lynch was familiar with pandemic viruses being released into the population via “mock-up” vaccines by the World Health Organization in an attempt to get ahead of a real pandemic, but this was nothing like that. This wasn’t a pandemic, it was a screw-up of epic proportion and as usual they had dumped it on her lap and she was left to handle the muck. She dried her face with a brown paper towel and tossed it in the garbage before coming out and pouring her second cup of coffee.
While the El Paso Zoo incident was considered the first known public case, it wasn’t the first time they had dealt with this, the difference was the military said it was quarantined and the batch that caused the death of nine soldiers had been destroyed.
They said it was no longer a threat.
It was meant to have ended there. Obviously not, otherwise she wouldn’t be missing out on her upcoming weekend getaway with her husband. She’d booked it well in advance; months ago after Wes had been voicing his concerns about the state of their relationship. She’d been struggling to keep the spark alive in their flailing marriage with increased workload and heavy demands. Her long hours and her constant trips around and outside of the country had eventually started to take their toll. This weekend was meant to fix that, or at least put a Band-Aid over the issue for another six months. She took a hard sip on her coffee and glanced at the photo of her husband. It probably wasn’t good getting married to someone who wasn’t in the military. They really couldn’t understand the demands that were put on her or the lives that hung in the balance if she didn’t do her job right. It was tough but rewarding in so many ways. She’d lost track of all the lives she’d saved, and the number of times the general public had narrowly avoided deadly outbreaks because of her.
Still, she was going to have to make the call.
“Damn it!” she said, spilling some coffee as she returned to her desk. Can this day get any worse?
It was what she was not being told about the incidents that worried her. She was used to protocol and having information shared to her on a need-to-know basis but in all her years investigating pandemics, she hadn’t seen anything like this.
Of course she poked and probed for more details but what was shared was vague at best. From what she could piece together, the Pentagon had been working on a new form of drug to control fear and anxiety. Essentially an attempt to make fearless soldiers.
She’d heard through the grapevine that the United States Department of Defense had been working with a third-party biotechnology lab to develop advanced forms of bioelectrical medicines that could suppress fear in soldiers so that the chances of success on missions would be higher. But she didn’t buy it, well, that was until she heard about DARPA getting involved and putting out an open challenge for labs to come up with a drug that might control fear and anxiety.
When asked why they were doing that, the DARPA official who had brought her up to speed on the incident had said that it was meant to be the answer for post-traumatic stress and to cut down on the high number of deaths of American soldiers.
It would regulate adrenaline, target the amygdala in the brain and produce a new kind of soldier, he’d said.
Yeah, right, she’d thought.
It certainly sounded like a palatable sound bite and she was sure the labs would have swallowed it down with great interest, especially since the Pentagon would be the ones footing the bill. But she knew the truth. It was all just smoke and mirrors for the real project, an undisclosed reason that only those higher up would be privy to.
She made the call to Wes and bit down on her lower lip expecting the worst.
“Hey, hon, so I packed the bags so we should be ready to…”
“Yeah about that, Wes,” Lynch said.
He groaned. “Why don’t I like the sound of that?”
She breathed in deeply. “Something’s come up.”
Lynch heard Wes sigh. “Typical. Please tell me it’s just for today.”
“Well that’s the thing. I’m not exactly sure how long I’m going to be working on this.”
Click.
The line went dead.
She closed her eyes and put a hand over her face. She knew he was going to lose his cool. She couldn’t blame him. Lynch was as pissed as he was but she didn’t have the type of job where she could tell them where to go. Some days she wished she’d stayed at a lower rank. But everyone said shit rolled downhill so she thought it would be better at the top. Nope.
She tried to call home again but he wouldn’t answer.
That meant a week or two of silent treatment.
Lynch put the phone down and swigged her coffee. She shook the mouse beside her computer and the screen blinked to life. Next, she navigated to her email to see if the details of the El Paso Zoo case had arrived yet. Nothing.
Her orders so far were to focus in on some small town in the armpit of Texas, some desert shithole where the kids were from. Her job was to make sure that it didn’t spread.
Easier said than done.
The media had already run a piece on the guy. She did a quick search for his name online and up came multiple listings showing the brutal video of the man being torn apart by lions. Sick, she thought.
On top of all of that, she would need to deal with the authorities in Marfa and that often was the worst part of the job. Especially if she was dealing with a cop or mayor with a chip on their shoulder. Many of them didn’t like to take orders from anyone outside of their town, and even more so if it was a woman.
She hit pause when someone knocked at her door.
“Come in.”
The door partly opened and Major Tim Brown stuck his head in. “You wanted to see me?”
“Yes, come in, Tim.”
He entered and closed the door behind him.
She glanced down and saw the email come in with the report.
“I hope you are ready to hit the road. I’ll send over the details to you. I would like to make sure that we keep this as quiet as possible. The last thing we need is the police breathing down our necks.”
“That may be unavoidable.”
Her brow furrowed. “Did you get the same email?”
“I received it earlier today. Fortunately it may be an isolated case. From what we can tell he was alone that day at the zoo and surveillance footage had him avoiding crowds.”
Lynch nodded while she zigzagged the updated report hoping it would give her further details on the virus itself. Nope. Just details about how fast it spread within the group of soldiers. Their job was to investigate the town, isolate any further incidents and make sure the students who were the closest to the victim were checked.
Chapter 2
Jenna Jackson finished bandaging up the woman’s hand. She was two hours over her scheduled eight-hour shift at Big Bend Regional Medical Center in Alpine. After years of working for the El Paso Zoo and losing their son Will in a car crash, they’d made the decision to start afresh somewhere else, so Brody took a job with the county and she went back to college to get her nursing diploma. Her mother had been a nurse and from an early age she’d always admired the career but was
never sure if it was something she could do.
With Alpine being the closest major hospital for Marfa, and her marriage falling apart, she made the decision to move in with her parents in Alpine just until they’d finalized the divorce.
“Do you mind if I have a word with you privately?” Jenna asked the husband who had brought in the patient. Both were middle-aged, no older than fifty. There was something about the situation that didn’t sit well with her. She came to learn the husband was a local preschool teacher and the woman a psychologist. She was known in these parts for helping both the police and locals manage their personal issues. That’s why it struck Jenna as odd.
Outside the room, she glanced at Deidra Hamilton through the window. Martin closed the door behind him and turned to her. “Yes?”
“Martin, you said you found her with her hand on the stove?”
He nodded. “That’s right.”
“Is she on any medication?”
“None that I know.”
“Alcohol?”
“She doesn’t drink.”
“Any mental health issues we should be aware of?”
He frowned. “Of course not. If she did she wouldn’t be able to function in the community as a psychologist. The people who come to her are the ones with real problems. She fixes them.”
“And you’ve never witnessed this kind of behavior before? No self-harm? Cutting? Attempts at taking her life?”
“None.”
Jenna nodded and looked through the window. Deidra was staring at her bandaged hand and looked confused. The poor woman looked as if she was in some kind of comatose state. She responded to pain and commands like put your hand out, and overall there was nothing that would lead Jenna to believe that she was mentally unstable, but it was the circumstances of how she came to experience second-degree burns that concerned her most.
“So run it by me again. You walked in on her just as she placed her hand against the stove burner?”