by Todd Wynn
Her focus pulled back inside the vehicle. She saw New Guy sitting in the driver’s seat, and she could hear Web still fiddling with the heart decoy in the passenger’s seat. Stewart was missing.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“Juniper . . . downtown,” New Guy reported.
She nodded, not awake enough to make sense of anything, yet. “Where’s Stewart?”
“Inside.” New Guy nodded across the street.
Before Mindy could take a look, she was overcome by a powerful yawn, a full-facer that made her whole head rattle. Stewart’s guess had been dead-on: she was up all night, reliving every bit of yesterday, and she was feeling it this morning. The yawn slowly released its hold on her, allowing her eyes to gaze out the window and land on a sign that read, POLICE STATION. The building had a prominent peak and elaborate architecture. That was because it used to be the county courthouse. When a new courthouse was built, this massive building was handed down to the local police department, which had never quite managed to fill it.
Inside the chief’s office, with its unusually high ceilings, Chief Dwayne Garner sat at his desk, rubbing his chin. He was middle aged, but seemed young for a chief. He was what you would think of as an assistant chief, minding the store until the real chief returned. But no real chief was going to return. Garner was it, and he had been since the last chief just up and retired two years ago.
“What did you have in mind?” Garner asked.
Across from him sat Stewart, drenched by light that poured in from an incredibly tall window. Stewart was an old pro at manipulating local law enforcement, and he knew that vaguer was better. The confiscated ship had passed directly over this town yesterday, and if anyone had encountered anything strange, there was a good chance it would have been reported.
“I just want to know if you’ve seen or heard anything out of the ordinary in the past few days,” Stewart said.
Garner shook his head as he searched his memory with a groan. “No, not that I can think of.” He afforded Stewart the respect that always accompanied a federal badge, even if it was merely attached to a Limestone Deposit Survey Group credential.
“What about yesterday?” Stewart prodded.
Garner shrugged, tiring of all the secrecy. “What’s this about?”
“I wish I could tell you more, Chief,” Stewart confided. “But this is part of an ongoing federal investigation, and I really can’t divulge much, except to say that any information you could give us about any unusual activity in the area would be greatly appreciated.”
“Well.” Garner gave a slow shrug. “I really don’t know what kind of thing you’re looking for—since you’re not giving me much to go on—but the only thing unusual that comes to mind is a pallet of beer bottles that was broken behind Miller’s.”
Stewart cocked his head inquisitively. “What’s that?”
“That’s the general store,” Garner explained. “The owner called so that he could get a police report to go along with the insurance claim. It was strange because there were footprints of beer leading right into the store, right through the back room . . . one set of footprints, like somebody smashed all the beers and then just walked into the store.”
Stewart sat forward in his chair, his interest piqued.
“If it had been several footprints that ran back up the alley,” Garner surmised, “I would have thought it was some kids. But I don’t know what to think of somebody breaking a bunch of beer bottles and walking into the store.”
“Do you suspect the owner?” Stewart asked.
Garner laughed. “No. You obviously don’t know Jerry.”
“Well, does he have a security camera in the store that could have gotten a look at the guy?” Stewart asked.
Garner laughed again. “You really don’t know Jerry.”
This sounded like a landing site to Stewart.
“What do you think?” Garner asked. “Is that the kind of unusual that you’re looking for?”
“No, I’m sure it was just some kids, like you said.”
The two men stood and shook hands across the desk. Stewart passed the chief a business card, asking him to call if anything should turn up.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with aliens, does it?” Garner added with a dry smile, as he looked over the card.
Stewart was thrown by this, but tried to keep a convincing poker face. A strange silence fell between them.
“Aliens?” Stewart inquired.
“Yeah, are you connected with the same agency that showed up earlier, today . . . the alien agency or whatever?”
“Who exactly showed up?” Stewart asked, trying to veil the urgency in his voice.
“Uh, some guy named Karl something . . . Browning, maybe.”
“Bruner?”
“Bruner, yeah.”
Stewart’s mind swirled. This only made sense, though. Bruner was a good investigator and quite tenacious. Bruner was dead set on proving the existence of aliens, and he was right on the trail. How useful Bruner could be in finding these trespassers. If only he were working for our side. Stewart chased the idea out of his head. That’s a line that couldn’t be crossed.
Bruner stood in the alley behind Miller’s General Store. The clean-up job had been minimal, to say the least. Some broken bottles had been swept haphazardly into the corner, but the pallet was still in place and still showing signs of an impact. It was clearly an impact from above, and Bruner twisted his neck to look up at the sky.
Failing marriage. He laughed at himself. Failed is the word. They say time heals all wounds, but they must have been mistaken. Bruner had poured five years of his life into the search for aliens, and it had done nothing to dull the sting of losing her. It had done nothing to fade the image of her. Bruner couldn’t remember why he and his wife drifted apart. It seemed more of a sudden thing than gradual, but the cause was still a mystery. They had been so happy. They had defied the odds and cultivated a successful marriage—not the kind that was just scraping by, but a marriage that was flourishing. Then one day, it came off the rails. With no warning, they were suddenly unable to speak to one another. He accepted that it may have been something he did, but in all his searching—and he did plenty of searching—he couldn’t find anything he had done wrong, at least not anything to warrant this type of disintegration. And it wasn’t his drinking: that came later.
Suddenly, the flask in his pocket was pulling at him. It was the only thing that ever succeeded at chasing the memories away. He would just need to reach in his pocket and pull it out. He could imagine the weight of it. It would be heavy—he remembered filling it this morning, not because he planned to drink from it, but just because things should be filled. Filling the flask had given him something to do. Actually, filling the flask was a good thing, because it allowed him to stop thinking about how empty the flask was. Welcome to the mind of an alcoholic, he thought. But he didn’t really believe that he was one. He joked about being an alcoholic because he knew that’s what an outsider might think—someone who didn’t know him. Bruner was much more important than an alcoholic. He was a federal agent, and a damn good one.
He focused again on the pallet, and he realized why his mind had called up the image of the flask in his pocket. It wasn’t the obvious: it wasn’t the beer bottles or the dried stream of alcohol stains on the pavement. It was the bottle caps that had been swept into a pile in the corner. They reminded him of Mountain Dew caps that his wife had collected for a little girl in the neighborhood. They had been for an art project, and the little girl needed more green ones. It was one of those cloudy memories that he wished he could bring into focus. He wasn’t sure which little girl it had been, and he didn’t remember whether it was for a school project or just for fun. But he remembered the joy on his wife’s face. If only that had been their little girl, he thought, maybe they would still be together . . . maybe if they had a child to bind them.
His hand slid into his pocket to retrieve the flask. Like
most people who claim not to be alcoholics, Bruner felt a drink allowed him to think more clearly. It chased away the demons that cluttered his mind. And he needed a clear mind now. But his hand found nothing. His pocket was empty.
Damn!!!, he thought, and he instantly knew. He knew he had left it on the dresser of his hotel room. He could picture it on top of a takeout menu, next to that plastic ice bucket. He could picture it so vividly that he felt he could almost pluck it from his mind and bring it into reality, and he was nearly desperate enough to try. But it was no more successful than someone watching a movie for a second time and hoping for a different ending. No matter how many times he played it over in his head, the outcome was always going to be the same: he left it on the dresser. Damn!!
Maybe he was better off without it. After all, he wanted to be a federal agent, today—not someone who might be mistaken for an alcoholic.
Bruner’s thoughts returned to the case—to his biggest lead: Stewart Faulkner. That name. Didn’t he know that name? He checked his phone and found Stewart Faulkner in his contacts. But why?
“Limestone Deposit Survey Group,” said a female voice after one ring.
“Stewart Faulkner, please,” Bruner replied.
“Mr. Faulkner is out of the office at the moment. Would you like to leave a message?”
“No. . . . Do you know where he is?”
“He’s on a field assignment. I’m not aware of the location.”
“Thank you.” Bruner hung up and stared at the contact information in his phone. When had he put Stewart Faulkner into his contacts? Where had he come across him? Bruner couldn’t put a face with the name, nor could he remember the name itself—but it was there.
23
Jeremy and Sara’s
First Morning
Jeremy had poured the orange juice, sliced an apple, and dropped the bread into the toaster. As he watched the eggs sizzle, he could hear the water running in his shower. He couldn’t help but picture Sara in there—his own hair still wet from his parents’ shower. He had suggested that Sara use his. After all, she was his guest. He liked the idea of having her in there—being able to say she had used his shower, not that he would actually say that to anyone.
As he flipped the egg, he heard the water stop. She would be stepping out of the tub now, reaching for a towel. He hoped he had straightened the bathroom enough. He didn’t want her to think he was a slob. Truth was he was pretty tidy, but he may have missed something.
Suddenly, he yanked his hand back from the stove. A red line across his knuckle showed his carelessness: he had let his finger rest on the edge of the pan.
“Breakfast, I see,” Sara said, as she slid into a seat at the kitchen table.
Jeremy couldn’t understand how she had moved from the shower to the kitchen so quickly. As he looked back to the eggs—dried, browned, and stuck to the pan—it dawned on him. He had been daydreaming far longer than he had realized.
“So, what will I be having this morning?” she asked.
“How does a finger sound?” he replied, his knuckle still throbbing.
“Oh, that’s a little direct. Is that one of your specialties?” She raised an eyebrow. Suddenly, Jeremy realized how wrong his comment could have sounded.
“I didn’t—I didn’t mean—I just burnt my finger . . . I wasn’t—”
Sara smiled, letting him off the hook. “It’s okay. I know what you didn’t mean.”
He laughed.
“You sure know how to get a girl’s hopes up, though.”
Jeremy turned back to the pan. “Do you like burnt eggs at all?”
“Not my favorite.”
“Good,” he said, as he scraped them into the garbage can.
Several eggs later, breakfast was back underway. And while preparing it, Jeremy had developed a plan: they would drive into town and find a police officer.
“Then what?” Sara asked.
“That’s the coolest part,” Jeremy said. “I’ll use that cube on him so that he has to tell the truth, and I’ll ask him what he knows about your case.”
“My case?”
“Yeah, I’ll ask him what he knows about a missing girl.”
“But how are you going to get him to hold the . . . the little thing?”
“I don’t know, yet.”
Jeremy had the length of the ride into town to come up with something, but when he pulled into a parking spot along the curb on Water Street, two spaces down from an empty police car, he still had nothing. Gillian’s Grill was across the street, and that was no doubt where the officer was having breakfast.
“Just give me the piece,” he said. “I’ll come up with something.”
Sara opened the wooden box and removed the quoret. She pressed it into Jeremy’s palm. “Good luck.”
“Thanks,” he smiled. He was about to be a knight in shining armor. He crossed the road and walked into Gillian’s. The cop was in the back corner of the restaurant, sitting with his back to the wall. Jeremy had heard that cops were trained to sit with their backs to the wall so they could keep an eye on their surroundings. But this guy seemed more interested in studying the food on his plate.
There was a single path down the middle of the long, narrow restaurant, with tables on the left and a bar on the right. Jeremy didn’t know what he would have done if an idea hadn’t come to him, but one did come—a good one. He walked right to the officer’s table and slid into the seat across from him.
“Hi, Clint,” Jeremy said. Most everyone in town knew Clint. He was a bodybuilder type, who liked having his arms overflow from his tight, short-sleeve shirts.
“Hey,” Clint replied. He didn’t know Jeremy, but he was used to strangers addressing him by name. It came with the job.
“I hate to bother you,” Jeremy began, “but my high-school football team is raising money by selling these really neat therapeutic stimulators.” He set the wooden cube on the table. “And they actually work. They were even featured in Fitness Magazine. They stimulate the muscles and increase circulation.”
Clint looked at him skeptically.
“Go ahead, try it out,” Jeremy said. “You just put your fingers in the grooves and turn it.”
Clint gave it a shot. He rotated his wrist as Jeremy had demonstrated and the cube illuminated.
“How’s it work?” Clint asked.
“I’m not sure. It uses microvibrations or something like that.”
“Is this supposed to be doing something?” Clint said. “Because I don’t feel a thing.”
“Just give it a little more time,” Jeremy said. “. . . So, what do you know about that girl that went missing about eight months ago?”
“What girl is that?”
“A girl that disappeared around here. . . . Are you still looking for her?”
“I don’t know anything about any missing girl,” he flexed his arm, starting to believe he was feeling something.
“You’re not looking for some girl, though? I thought I heard something about that.”
“No.”
Jeremy needed to make sure the cube was working. He needed a test question. “What's the worst mistake you've ever made in your job?”
“In a hit-and-run case last year, I forgot to log evidence from the crime scene. It stayed in my trunk for a month. And when I realized it, I just snuck it into the evidence room and falsified the log with the old date. It could have ruined the case and gotten me fired.”
Yep, the cube was working. Clint was suddenly hit by the sound of his own words, never suspecting they were the result of the device in his hand.
“So, nothing about a missing girl? A missing girl with government secrets?” Jeremy asked again.
Clint was still reeling from his impromptu admission, but the quoret compelled him to answer. “No.”
Jeremy pulled the cube from Clint’s hand and slid out of his chair. Clint quickly grabbed him by the arm. “What is that thing?” he demanded, in a quiet tone.
“What?�
�� Jeremy played dumb.
“Who are you?”
Jeremy shook his head. “Nobody.”
Clint’s grip showed no signs of loosening, and Jeremy sensed he was in big trouble. Clint reached for his waist, probably for his gun or his handcuffs. Either way, Jeremy was wishing he had never dreamed up such a crazy plan—tangling with a police officer. What was he thinking? He should have left well enough alone. He should have stayed home with Sara . . . he could have taken her for a long walk around the lake, or—
Suddenly, Clint’s grip relaxed and slid down Jeremy’s arm. The man fell limp and tipped forward; his head gently bonked the tabletop. Sara came into Jeremy’s peripheral, pointing a quoret at the fallen man—apparently the same one that had knocked her out yesterday.
“Oh shit,” Jeremy sighed, “that’s great.” They both looked around the restaurant to see no one watching.
“I thought I was going to jail,” Jeremy whispered, as they slipped out the front door and made their way across the street.
“What’d you find out?”
“I found out I’m not going to jail,” Jeremy laughed, his heart still racing.
“Besides that.”
“Nothing,” he said.
“Nothing?”
“Nope.”
“Then, why did he grab you?” she asked.
“Well, that was my fault. I wanted to make sure the thing was working, so I got him to confess to falsifying reports.”
“But nothing about me?”
“No.”
“Okay, so what now?” she asked.
Jeremy laughed again, “How would you feel about a nice, long walk around a lake?”