The Chalupa Conundrum

by Lyle Christie

  “I believe this latest news only adds to Lars’s innocence.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “The team was helping him acquire the land, and he obviously wouldn’t want to sabotage their findings, so, clearly, some other party is involved in their disappearance.”

  “Well, he might not be a kidnapper, but he could still be a drug dealer.”

  I scrolled down and read more of the file, though most of it was filled with boring details related to the effects and side effects on lab mice that we’d already seen on Nate’s computer. At the very end of the document, however, there were a number of notes that detailed personal observations and opinions regarding anticipated usefulness. I read through each one and found the last one to be oddly colorful and wondered if perhaps Wainright had an actual personality buried under his rather cold stoic demeanor.

  “Skip the Cacique Guaro and go right to the foreplay,” I read out loud.

  “That seems pretty out of character for Wainright,” she said.

  “Or so we thought—until we learned his password.”

  “Good point.”

  I closed the file and stared at the various desktop icons and suddenly had an idea. In the old days, you could tell a lot about a person by their garbage, and it was common for police and intelligence agencies to do a little dumpster diving in the trash cans of anyone they were investigating. In the digital age, that was still true, but people also created digital garbage. It could be anything from Microsoft Word documents and porn to discarded emails. I therefore checked his trash folder first and sadly found it empty. Oh well, there were more fish in the sea. I moved on to another form of digital garbage—namely email. So much of our lives were contained in our email—the places we shopped, ate, visited, or even queried all sent us updates, reminders, and news every fucking day of the week. We were in the age of big data, and the majority of companies were paying big money to figure out what the hell we were going to buy next so that they could send out an appropriate coupon or special. So, our email could be an insight into the tale of our lives, and with that in mind, I opened up Wainright’s email program and was again faced with a password dilemma.

  “Lovely. We need another password,” I said.

  “Any thoughts?”

  I went with the night’s favorite and typed in professorhotsauce, and up came his email.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Same old—same old.”

  “Honestly, I’m starting to feel a little creeped out.”

  “It’s tough to be adored.”

  I scrolled down through his inbox and passed emails from Amazon, Netlix, Groupon, and companies selling discounted Viagra, and, ultimately, found nothing of particular significance. I tried the mail trash next and found it was empty, which left me with a final, though potentially excellent, option. People were quick to discard incoming emails, but they generally forgot about outgoing emails, so that’s where I hoped to find our next break. I went to his outbox and scrolled though several before discovering one that had been sent to a gmail account with the name hglovegod2. This, of course, made me wonder if someone had already taken hglovegod1. Regardless who hglovegod1 or 2 might be, the only person I could think of with an H and a G in their name and who was also connected to Wainright was Hector Gomez—my favorite frequent flyer and Latin menace. I checked the date and saw that the email was sent the day before yesterday, and, even better, it had an attachment. I double-clicked the attached file, and a Microsoft Word document opened with the heading Project H, and below it were the words ET-Reference Dates—whatever the hell that meant. What was it about fucking scientists that made them love their precious acronyms so much? Next were a series of dates and locations, and I went line by line until coming across one from two days ago—the exact day we had arrived at Chalupa. I looked at the location, and it had the abbreviation Cha-Wat. My mind instantly went into a kind of overdrive as I thought about the pump station and its software as well as the date and location on the email. Everything suddenly made sense, and I slapped the desk with my hand and inadvertently startled the shit out of Alessandra.

  “What the hell was all that about?” She asked.

  “I just figured something out.”

  “Oh, was it that girls have innies and boys have outies?” she asked.

  “No, and while I’m always happy to see funny Hot Sauce, it’s actually related to a totally different matter.”

  “Well then, do tell, Sherlock.”

  “When we were on that waterfall—don’t you think it was weird that we suddenly felt the urge to kiss?”

  “Yeah—I guess so—why?”

  “Well, as far as I could tell, our entire time up here has been either hot or cold. One minute you want to kiss me. The next minute you’re going off about all my supposed feelings for Estelle and your supposed feelings for your absentee boyfriend Lars-bear.”

  She thought for a moment then looked at me curiously.

  “OK, then what’s your hypothesis, Dr. Finn?” she asked.

  “We were drugged.”

  “We already know that.”

  “Yeah, but now I’m talking about at the waterfall. I think Cha-Wat is short for Chalupa Waterfall, and that’s what that secret pipe I discovered is used for. I’m guessing all the locations on the map in the pump room mark an outflow point, and, for whatever reason, they have this entire place wired to disperse drugs, which would make Chalupa a great big interactive laboratory.”

  “It seems like a lot of trouble and effort for a little data.”

  “Not if it’s the first stage of an off-the-books clinical trial.”

  “And what about the UCLA team? What’s the connection? Do you think they came across something they weren’t supposed to find?”

  “Perhaps, and at least then we’d have a decent motive.”

  I checked the dates on the file, and, there, six days back was the date of the disappearance and the initials Cha-Cam, which very likely stood for Chalupa Camp.

  “It appears they drugged the camp the night everyone went missing, so there’s our connection between their disappearance and Von Träger.”

  “Wait a minute. Let me think about this for a minute.” Alessandra said, looking decidedly uncomfortable.

  I suspected she might be suffering from a very common psychological condition called cognitive dissonance. It occurred when facts and reason went against a person’s accepted belief, and it only got tougher with time. For instance, when a person ends up in a slow line at a supermarket, the longer he or she stays in that line, the less likely that person will switch to a faster one. They have emotionally invested in that line, so it becomes difficult to do the rational thing and move on. The phenomena also applies to bad relationships, living near active volcanos, and, in this case, dating a handsome billionaire.

  “What is there to think about? We have a new designer drug, derived from a very specific area of real estate, and a billionaire who owns a multibillion dollar pharmaceutical company that wants the land so it can produce the drug. Pretty straight forward.”

  “He wants the land because it’s sacred.”

  “You mean valuable.”

  “Well, if he really wants the land so badly, then where does the UCLA team fit in your scheme?”

  “I don’t know exactly—but the one thing I do know is that they are somehow connected.”

  “I assume you understand that all your evidence is purely speculative and circumstantial and doesn’t take into account that it wouldn’t exactly be easy to hide sixteen scientists for nearly a week.”

  “Unless you’re a billionaire.”

  “Again, that’s still speculation.”

  “Until Beeber gets back to me with the website info. If he finds hard evidence that connects the off-the-books drug trial to Von Träger Pharmaceuticals, then we can bring in the authorities.”

  “It’s a huge company with a lot of people who could have engineered this—Wainright obviously being one of
them.”

  “Wainright is a serious possibility for sure, but he would have needed more help than just Nate.”

  All of a sudden we heard vehicles outside, and Alessandra looked at me nervously.

  “What the hell do we do now?”

  “Get the fuck out of here.”

  I closed out all the open windows on the desktop and put the computer into sleep mode, but, as we moved towards the door, we heard footsteps in the hallway as well as the voices of Wainright and Nate.

  “What the hell are they doing back here?” she whispered.

  “Maybe we tripped some kind of silent alarm.”

  That was probably the case, but we’d never know for sure. Regardless, we needed to hide, so we stepped away from the door and ducked down behind one of the lab tables and waited and hoped they wouldn’t come into this room. Seconds passed, and we saw their silhouettes on the other side of the glass wall.

  “The silent alarm originated at the pump station, but whoever triggered it could be anywhere. So, I’ll start on that end and you begin at the entry lobby, and we’ll work our way to the middle,” Wainright said.

  We waited until they had each disappeared to opposite ends of the hallway before quietly slipping out the door.

  “What do we do? Confront them now?” Alessandra asked.

  “Hell no. I don’t want them to know that we’re on to them yet. Besides, we’re trespassing, so we should just hide until they’re gone.”

  “But, they’re going to search the place, you idiot!”

  “I know, but I’m pretty fucking good at hiding, so, follow me.”

  We walked in the direction Wainright had gone, but, just as we reached the door to the greenhouse, I came to a stop, and Alessandra, who was busy keeping watch behind us, accidentally plowed into me. We both fell onto a metal rolling cart and sent a number of lab supplies tumbling onto the floor, and the resulting noise was easily loud enough to reach the ears of anyone in the building.

  “Shit! I don’t remember seeing that fucking cart on the tour,” she said.

  “Me neither. Now we really need to hide.”

  We went through the door and entered the green house, where I led Alessandra off the paved path and into a grotto of ferns. Just as we settled in, Wainright came from the pump room, and Nate arrived a moment later, and the two nerds met in the middle, where they were both looking a bit unsettled.

  “Any idea what that was?” Wainright asked.

  “I think someone or something ran into the supply cart in the main hallway.”

  “Well, where is the perpetrator now?”

  “No idea, but I’m guessing whatever or whoever it was went this way.”

  Wainright and Nate fanned out and started at the far ends then worked their way closer, all the while shining their search beams over every inch of terrain. They were drawing ever closer, and, soon, Wainright was shining his beam right on us. I could feel Alessandra’s body tense, but we managed to stay still, and as quickly as the light arrived it was gone, and he was meeting Nate only a short distance from where we were hidden.

  “Must have been an animal,” Nate said.

  “Maybe, but it seems a little coincidental with all that’s going on.”

  “Well, whatever or whoever was here is gone now, so we should get going. I don’t want to be late to my dinner date,” Nate said.

  “God forbid something intrude upon your busy social life.”

  “Well, then what do you suggest we do?”

  Wainright thought for a moment.

  “Oh well, I suppose there’s nothing more we can do tonight.”

  “Exactly,” Nate said.

  “Yes, but don’t forget how important it is that we make sure nothing interferes with Hector’s plan.”

  “Don’t worry, as I fully understand how much is riding on it.”

  The two turned and walked out, leaving Alessandra and me alone in the stillness of the greenhouse.

  “Now aren’t you glad I made you wear camo?” I asked.

  “Annoyingly, yes, but does it have to fit so snug in the chest and ass.”

  “Yes, because I rather enjoy that view. Now, my seriously hot and camouflaged jungle vixen, let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Roamin' in the Gloamin'

  ALESSANDRA AND I quickly made our way to the pump station and exited through the small access hatch and managed to get to the fence and climb over without raising any alarm bells—at least none that we knew of, anyway. We slipped quietly around the perimeter fence and hunkered down to wait for Wainright and Nate to leave, and, five minutes passed before the two stepped outside, engaged in a brief conversation, then finally got in their vehicles and drove away. The Chalupan night was once again quiet as we made our way to the road and started walking back towards the camp.

  “Holy shit. I can’t believe what I just heard. It’s one thing to hear it from you, but witnessing it first hand through my own eyes and ears is another thing altogether,” Alessandra said.

  “I’m so happy to hear how much faith you have in me.”

  “It’s not you. It’s that I know these people, and they’re basically friends—well, Nate is, anyway.”

  “Now, just imagine Hector leaving those two and going to visit your boyfriend.”

  “I’d rather not, as I want to believe that there’s another answer to all this.”

  We continued walking, but a strange noise came from the hills off to our right, and we paused and exchanged a nervous glance. There weren’t any more sounds, so we continued on wearily through the darkness.

  “You don’t think we’re going to see those things again do you?” Alessandra asked.

  “God only knows, but we do have something working in our favor tonight.”

  “Which is?”

  “What were we were doing right before they arrived the other night?”

  “Kissing.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, if we don’t kiss, then they won’t appear?”

  “Well, it’s a little more complicated than that, because there were some additional factors such as the fact that we had been drugged with Sexstasy.”

  “And you think the drug made us imagine the creatures?”

  “Not entirely, as bullets don’t bounce off of imaginary creatures, but our perception of them was definitely effected. At least I hope so, anyway, as the alternative would change everything I’ve ever believed since the age of eight when I lost Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy—all in the same miserable year.”

  “I’d have to agree with you there.”

  “There’s something else. According to Wainright’s email to Hector, the UCLA camp’s water had been drugged the night they all disappeared.”

  “You think they all drank from that stream? That’s highly unlikely and unsanitary.”

  “No, but I suspect the drug disperses like an aerosol when traveling through rapids or over falls, and it would partially explain Estelle’s unusual phone call.”

  “What about the noises that you heard in the background? I don’t think Sexstasy travels through phone lines or Satellite relays.”

  “That’s a good point and one I’m still not sure about.”

  “Well, drugs or not, I can’t believe we’re walking through the very area where we were attacked.”

  “No shit, and, on that note, I think we should make haste for the camp.”

  We quickened our pace and continued through the darkness, with my scrot-sense heightened though not exactly tingling, until we reached the camp and pondered our next move.

  “So, what’s on the agenda now?” Alessandra asked.

  “We could hike to the car and head back to San Jose, but I wouldn’t mind doing a little more reconnaissance tomorrow and maybe even drop in unannounced on your boyfriend.”

  “You mean so you can visit your new girlfriend?”

  “No, she probably won’t even be there, as she’s leaving L
ars.”

  “And moving to California?”

  “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  “Wow, you don’t waste any time do you? Talk about being a home wrecker!” she said.

  “That relationship was broken when I found it.”

  “I could say the same thing,” she responded.

  A great wall of silence suddenly appeared between us.

  “OK, enough bickering. It’s getting a little silly,” Alessandra said.

  “Agreed, so perhaps we should have snagged some Sexstasy samples while we were at the lab.”

  “I’m not sure that would have helped our situation.”

  “Well, if you would have looked more closely at the report on Wainright’s computer, you would have read that it reduces inhibition and increases libido, but there was no mention of it creating attraction. Therefore, all it did was heighten existing feelings.”

  “Interesting—so, now you’re an expert in biochemistry?”

  “I took biochemistry senior year as an elective.”

  Alessandra was quiet a moment, as she was probably thinking about my revelation and whether or not it called her relationship with Lars into question, but, whatever actually made her pause for thought had at least ended the argument.

  “So, I guess we’re camping again, but I’m thinking we shouldn’t start the generators,” she said.

  “Yeah, fuck that. We need to continue under extreme operational security.”

  “Then I guess we’re officially roughing it. So, what’s for dinner? Grub worms and moss?”

  “Only if we can find some Spanish Moss, but that would be too difficult in the dark. How about Hotdogs with beans and chilies, then we can follow it up with Tres Leches cake for dessert.”

  “Sounds good, but I think the resulting flatulence would end up violating your whole operational security protocol.”

  “Very likely, so let’s go have a look in the roach coach and see if we can find something that’s a wee bit less gassy, as I’d rather not spend the rest of the night taking bung hits,” I said.

  Alessandra looked at me curiously as she thought about my last comment, but she finally figured out I’d what I meant by bung hits and burst out laughing.