The Space Between

by Dete Meserve

  “I can’t . . . I can’t entirely wrap my head around what happened after I left, either. But I accept the proof. I have to. What’s holding you back from accepting the evidence? That’s not like you.”

  I look at him a moment. I hadn’t told anyone—not even Rachel—about my suspicions, but it feels like I can confide in him. “Something about the way the murder weapon was found in the backyard seems . . . off to me. It was buried just an inch or two beneath the surface. As if someone wanted it to be found. If Ben was trying to hide the evidence, why wouldn’t he make it harder to find?”

  “We can’t know his state of mind when he did it . . .”

  “And there’s something else that doesn’t add up. The night Ben hid the murder weapon, he used a high-powered light to blind the security camera in the backyard so it wouldn’t see or record anything. Why would he do that when all he’d have to do is stop the cameras from recording?”

  Shock registers on his face. “You have security-camera footage? I thought you said it had been erased.”

  “I’ve recovered recordings of the hours and days before Ben disappeared. On one of the clips we can clearly see someone blinding the camera that’s pointed right at where the murder weapon was found.”

  He furrows his brow. “Can you see who it is?”

  “Not yet. But I’m recovering more and more of the data. And soon, I’ll be able to figure out who was there that night and what they were doing. And everything else that happened in the days before Ben went missing.”

  “Want my honest opinion? All this looking at the past is probably a waste of your time. As hard as it is, you need to accept the evidence and start taking the next steps in your life.”

  I shake my head, suddenly feeling brave. “No astronomer, no scientist, just accepts the evidence. The best scientists are those who understand the limitations of the evidence. It’s our job to challenge it. The most important discoveries are made when we question evidence and consider new possibilities.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  It’s nearly midnight and I’m sitting on the patio, telescope trained on the skies. I’m still not ready to go back inside. It seems like everything that is uncertain and disturbing exists somewhere else on this planet, while here underneath the moon and stars—this is where it’s safe. Where things make sense.

  Off in the northwest, I see the blue-white star Vega. Located only twenty-five light-years away, it is one of the brightest stars in the night sky.

  I fell in love with Ben under this star.

  We’d taken a weekend adventure to the Anza-Borrego Desert southeast of Los Angeles, one of a dozen certified International Dark Sky Parks dedicated to preserving night-sky visibility by enforcing low-lighting ordinances. Ben and I had been inseparable for six months, and this was our first overnight trip together.

  Under a starry vault on a warm summer’s night in June, we had gazed at the majestic swath of the Milky Way arching over the twinkling stars high above the Borrego Valley. We stared in awe of the sweeping view of the cosmos, knowing that we were seeing stars as they once were eons ago, perhaps as long as the beginning of time itself.

  In the translucent light, I grabbed his hand and led him seventy yards through thick, knee-high grass to give him the best view of the Summer Triangle, an asterism—or pattern—of three brilliant stars, with Vega reigning at its apex.

  Deep in the desert here, the stars seemed almost within reach, and without the moon in the sky, we could see the vast desert around us by starlight.

  “Vega is the brightest star in the asterism,” I said, pointing out each of the stars. “Over to her left is Deneb, and to her lower right is Altair. And the Milky Way passes right through them all.”

  As we breathed in the expansive view of the Milky Way, I told him the legend written in the stars. “Vega, the daughter of a king, falls in love with a shepherd named Altair. When Vega’s father finds out, he forbids her to see him, but when he realizes nothing will stop the two lovers, he convinces the gods to place the two in the sky, where they’re forever separated by the Celestial River represented by the Milky Way. But even though they can’t be together, their love burns brighter than any star in the sky.”

  We stood there in silent amazement, and then I handed him a set of binoculars to reel in the gossamer beauty of it all, to see the haunting nebulae and star clusters straight from a midsummer night’s dream. As he scanned the Milky Way and the Summer Triangle, his other hand holding mine, I felt powerfully alive, part of something glittering and gauzy.

  “Beautiful, right?” I whispered.

  He handed me the binoculars. My breath caught in my throat as I waited for him to speak. “The brightest star here isn’t Vega. It’s you, Sarah.” He smiled in the incandescent light. “I think I’ve fallen in love with you . . .”

  With Vega shining high above our heads, he wrapped me in his arms and I sensed our future laid out before us.

  Back in my garden, the clouds journey across the sky, shuttering my view of Vega. It’ll be several more months until summer comes and I can see her again in the Summer Triangle.

  The Summer Triangle.

  Is that what Ben was saying on the voice mail? Not summer angle, but Summer Triangle?

  My mind races. Was it possible that Ben was telling me—in a kind of private code—where he was headed?

  Could he have once been planning to go to the desert cabin we stayed in beneath the Summer Triangle?

  I can’t concentrate. I keep walking from room to room as if I expect to find the answers there.

  I find the voice-mail recording of Ben’s call the night of the shooting and listen to it again. There are many gaps, but Ben could be saying “Summer Triangle.”

  I wander into our bedroom, stare at Ben’s athletic shoes still waiting by the closet door. I consider telling Detective Dawson about the Summer Triangle, but I doubt it’s relevant anymore now that Ben is by all accounts dead.

  A tear escapes my eye. Ben had left me a message. All this time, I’d been angry that he didn’t tell me about the poisoning, the gun, or the million dollars in the bank account. But in the moments after he was shot, he had called me to say two important words: Summer Triangle.

  Two words that would’ve given me hope if I’d heard them then. They were proof of his plan to escape from whoever was after him—Gary Stanton?—by going to the cabin we’d stayed in to experience the Summer Triangle.

  Our cabin had been billed by the owner as “secluded” but was so remote that we had to drive on a narrow, rough dirt road for nearly three miles before reaching it. And it was so well hidden by stately Coulter pines and mounds of ribbonwood chaparral that we passed by it several times before spotting it.

  The cabin didn’t have running water, but there was a well about a half mile away, a twice-daily hike that had made Ben and me feel like true desert pioneers. We spent days exploring that remote region of the Anza-Borrego, climbing the lofty summit of Combs Peak and looking out toward some of Southern California’s highest mountains, then gazing on the Salton Sea below. Although the cabin lacked any modern amenities—running water, electricity, Wi-Fi—it made up for it with amazing views, charming nooks for reading and napping, and a sturdy wraparound deck for stargazing.

  We’d gathered massive pine cones and wood for our nightly fires in the stone fireplace, christened the cabin the Summer Triangle Haven—which Ben scrawled with his always-handy Sharpie on a piece of wood—and vowed to return there every year.

  Though we only went once more.

  And clearly Ben never made it to our haven. His car, splattered with bloody evidence of a severe injury, was found in Joshua Tree, a two-hour drive away.

  Ben is dead.

  The tears well up from somewhere deep inside. They’re rough and bitter from waiting so long to come out, and they spill from my eyes, sliding down my cheeks in thick droplets.

  “Are you crying?” I hear my sister whisper from behind. She wraps me in a hug. “Don’t cry.
”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  DAY SEVEN

  My phone is chiming. Insistent. A text, not a call.

  I open my eyes and glance at the clock: 3:28. In the morning. In the darkened room, I grope around on my nightstand for the phone, then realize it’s not there.

  The chiming continues.

  My head is heavy as I lift it off my pillow and make my way downstairs to find the phone.

  I stumble into the kitchen, where moonlight streams through the window. The phone chimes again, so I sift through the piles of unopened mail on the countertop and find it beneath the property tax bill. In my haze, I don’t remember leaving it there.

  The bright screen makes my eyes water: G188 AB BA1

  The phone number isn’t in my contacts, so the caller ID says “Unknown.” It’s an area code I don’t recognize.

  Then a second text: ABG 01X0

  The phone chimes again, startling me. A third text swoops across the screen: 0B ABG E1C8L. 6HFG ZB91

  For a moment, I wonder if someone sent a text to the wrong number, but then my brain wakes up to the idea of a code. But from whom? I don’t dare hope that it’s from Ben.

  I flip on the overhead lights and grab a pen. My first clue is that there are numbers in the code, which means that the sender has included the numbers zero through nine in the cipher key. That makes it harder.

  I try several simple substitution ciphers, ones that are the most common, but none of them turn up any real words.

  I attempt blunt force, trying all shift possibilities one by one. The letter A is B, the letter A is C, and so on. My eyes are blurry and my hand is cramped by the time I finally stumble on the twenty-four-letter shift possibility.

  The first word decodes: TELL

  My hand trembles as I decipher the second word: NO

  Then the third: ONE

  TELL NO ONE

  My breath is caught in my throat. The words swim in front of my eyes as I decode the next line:

  NOT DEAD

  My hand races across the paper as I unravel the last line:

  DO NOT REPLY. JUST COME.

  “Come where?” I say out loud. The words are breathy and my voice doesn’t sound like my own.

  “The Summer Triangle?” I wonder. “Joshua Tree? Where, Ben?”

  I pace the kitchen floor. I don’t dare allow myself to feel the joy that’s welling up inside. Ready to burst.

  Ben is not dead.

  “Wait, just wait. Think. Think, Sarah.” My voice sounds strange, like I’ve become a lunatic. Calm down.

  I feel the blood rocketing through my veins. Then anger.

  Why did he wait so long to tell me he was alive? Why did he put me through a week of agony?

  Another chime:

  QR PN QS A 00U SS OT J

  It takes a bit to decode this one because it’s a string of numbers.

  34 20 35 N 117 55 16 W

  Coordinates. Even with the markings for degrees, minutes, and seconds missing, I recognize this immediately as geographic coordinates. I plug them into the maps app on my phone and see where it is. It’s not the Summer Triangle. Or Joshua Tree.

  It’s Buckhorn Campground in the Angeles National Forest. I type the location into Google and see that it’s a well-known campground located about an hour from here. But it’s closed for winter, and to reach it, I’ll have to make my way along roads that twist and wind through the mountains. At night.

  LBH XE1 5A 0XA31E. 3B ABJ

  I scan the message and consider searching for an online code breaker but figure it’ll take me longer to find my laptop than it will to decrypt this one.

  YOU ARE IN DANGER. GO NOW.

  I can’t just leave. What about Rachel? Zack?

  As if the sender—is it Ben?—could read my mind, another text zips across the screen:

  4XI1 EXZ418 GX71 MXZ7 GB F2

  The decoding comes more easily now.

  HAVE RACHEL TAKE ZACK TO SF

  I throw a few phone batteries in my backpack, my glasses, an extra pair of sunglasses, and a bottle of water. I don’t know what to prepare for.

  Ben’s message says “tell no one,” but I must tell Rachel. How else will I convince her to take Zack to San Francisco?

  I rush into her room and jostle her awake.

  “Rachel, I got a text from Ben. He’s not dead. He’s asking me to meet him. I have to go. Now. And you have to leave with Zack. Now.”

  “What?” She rubs the sleep from her eyes.

  I thrust the phone in her face. Her jaw slackens.

  “He sent it in code?” Rachel had always admired our encoded exchanges. For his thirtieth birthday, she’d even written him an entire birthday card in code, shifting every letter by eight.

  “One of the simple Julius Caesar ciphers we’ve used before. He probably sent it in code so I’ll know for certain it’s from him. And he probably guesses police and FBI are monitoring my text messages.”

  Her eyes widen. “This is crazy.”

  “You have to get going. We have to get going.”

  Her voice is groggy. “There aren’t flights to San Francisco at four in the morning.”

  I know what she’s thinking. That I’ve come unhinged. And maybe I have. My heart is pounding so hard that I can hear it beating in my ears.

  “I know,” I say, slowing down. “But pack your things so you can try to get on an early flight. I’m going to get Zack ready.”

  “Wait. Where is he? Where is Ben?”

  I stop and draw a deep breath. “He says to tell no one.”

  “Where is he?”

  “A campground in the Angeles National Forest.”

  Her face flushes bright red. “It can’t be true . . .”

  “What can’t be?”

  “That Ben is alive and hiding in some campground in Angeles National Forest. You saw the photos of his car in the desert. All the blood. There’s no way he—”

  She’s right. It’s impossible.

  “And why does he say you shouldn’t reply? What would happen if you did?”

  I’m usually the one who’s calm, measured. Logical. But right now, she is. I try to think of a reason why I shouldn’t reply.

  “The FBI is monitoring all my communications. As long as I don’t reply, this just looks like a spammy text some drunk person might have sent me. That’s what the FBI might think. But if I reply, they’ll immediately know there’s some kind of communicating going on.”

  “But why wouldn’t Ben want police to know where he is?”

  “Because he’s a murder suspect, Rachel.”

  As if to underscore my message, the grandfather clock downstairs chimes, startling us. We wait for it to finish its song, gathering our thoughts.

  “How can you be sure this is really from Ben? Can you trace the number?”

  “Doubt it. His phone broke in the shooting, remember? This is probably one of those prepaid cell phones.”

  “Then you can’t be sure it’s him, Sarah. You have to reply. That way, you can force whoever it is to prove he’s Ben.”

  I’m not sure. If this is Ben, he must have a reason for asking me not to reply. What if replying puts him in some kind of danger?

  Rachel lowers her voice. “And how does he know that I’m here with you?”

  A chill rushes up my spine. I don’t have an answer for that, either, and that bothers me. “Maybe he’s just assuming . . . I mean, of course you’d be here.”

  But now uncertainty creeps into my veins.

  Rachel takes my hand and squeezes it. “Ben is dead, Sarah. Whoever this is, it isn’t him.”

  I don’t want to accept her reasoning. Even though it’s far more rational than my own. I decide to reply to the text with a question that only Ben would know. And in a code that no one but Ben could break.

  I sit on the edge of Rachel’s bed and type.

  nuqDaq poH tuj bI’reS triangle?

  My question is simple, but it’s not encoded in a Julius Caesar cipher. It’s
in Klingon. My Klingon vocabulary isn’t strong anymore, and I doubt Ben’s is, either, but he’ll certainly be able to figure out this phrase.

  Where is Summer Triangle?

  If it’s Ben on the receiving end, he’ll remember that nuqDaq means “where is.” That’s beginner-level Klingon. And even if he can’t remember the long phrase for summer—poH tuj bI’reS—he’ll certainly put the phrase in the context of the one English word “triangle” and figure out what I’m asking.

  While I await an answer, I wake Zack and tell him what’s happening. I know Ben has said to tell no one, but Zack will never get on a plane to San Francisco unless I explain. In his sleep stupor, I’m not sure he understands the details of what I’m saying, but there’s no doubt he senses the urgency. He hugs me tight. “Dad is alive?”

  I look into his deep brown eyes. “Yes. I’m going to find him.”

  “Why can’t I go with you?”

  “Dad wants you to go to San Francisco with Aunt Rachel.”

  “But why?”

  I don’t have an answer. “I’m sure he has a good reason.”

  “But how’s it safer for you to go alone? Into the mountains?”

  I’ve never been a particularly good driver in the mountains. I usually grip the steering wheel too tightly, certain that a pothole or rock will send the car hurtling over the edge. In the Angeles National Forest, there are spans of twisty highway without guardrails, and at that elevation, there can be snow or slick roads this time of year.

  “I’ll ask Brad to go with me.”

  That answer doesn’t do much to lessen the panic in his eyes. “When am I coming back? Are you bringing Dad home with you?”

  I wrap him in a big hug. “I don’t know. But I’ll text or call as soon as I do.”

  While he starts to toss some clothes into a small suitcase, I glance at my phone. No answer from Ben.

  Forty-five minutes later I’m hurtling in the dark toward Angeles National Forest. The sun won’t rise for another two hours, and outside of the sweep of my headlights, I’m surrounded by slate-gray mountains.