“What happened?” she asked because she couldn’t take it anymore.
“I ran, and ended up in Hope.”
NOW
Becca took a bite of her coffee cake. It was as good and rich as ever, a taste of her childhood.
Mrs. Browning watched her eat that bite, then leaned back in her own chair. Becca wondered if that position was even comfortable, given Mrs. Browning’s pronounced dowager’s hump.
“In the summer of aught eight, the shantytown just outside of Hope burned to the ground,” Mrs. Browning began in her teacherly voice. “Most of the histories do not mention the shantytown. Those that do claim the fire threatened Hope itself. It didn’t threaten the buildings that comprised Hope. It threatened the vision of Hope.”
Very dramatic, Becca thought. She took another bite of cake, then followed it with a sip of tea, straining to keep her expression interested and credulous.
“The fire was as controlled a burn as the people of Hope could manage in those bygone days.”
The ease with which Mrs. Browning told this story made Becca believe that Mrs. Browning used to recite it as part of the history project.
“The townspeople had gotten together and decided to rid themselves of the strangers once and for all.”
Mrs. Browning shook her fork—still holding coffee cake—at Becca.
“If you look in the papers of the time, you’ll see references to the strangers. They arrived in 1900, claiming to have lost their wagon several miles back. They had no luggage, few belongings, and they spoke a strange version of English. The locals thought they were ignorant immigrants who’d been tricked by their guide, and gave them some land just outside of town.”
“Where the End of the World is?” Becca asked.
Mrs. Browning raised her eyebrows. “Am I telling this or are you?”
“Sorry,” Becca said.
“Where that 1970s mall is. It’s now near the center of town. But then, it was just outside, on land no one wanted. The strangers built their own little cabins—poorly. They looked like they didn’t know what to do, and of course, no one was going to help them much more than provide a meal or some supplies. They got a bit of work, too.”
Becca nodded, wishing Mrs. Browning would get on with it. “I don’t know what happened. The reference in various letters I’ve seen is that the strangers confirmed their demonic qualities. I have no idea what that means or how they confirmed demonic qualities, but the upshot is that the town fathers asked them to leave. The strangers said they wouldn’t. The fight went on for some months, when finally the shantytown burned.”
“A controlled burn,” Becca said. “Started by?”
“Anyone who’s everyone,” Mrs. Browning said. “I never asked. Besides, everyone would’ve told me they had nothing to do with it. But you’ll notice—well, of course you won’t, they’re all dead—but I noticed when I was young just how many of the older generation carried some burn marks on their hands. Except for that controlled burn, and the loss of a building here and there, Hope was one of the few western communities that didn’t have a serious fire. And not all of these men worked for the Hope Volunteer Fire Department.”
Becca finished her coffee cake. Then she picked up her tea mug and cradled it. “So they burned the shantytown. What has that to do with the natatorium?”
“It was being built. The hotel was just a shell—it wasn’t nearly done yet—and the nat was dug, but not poured. It was going to be a tennis court. In those days, I believe the courts were clay. Not that it matters. It never got finished.”
“Because.. . ?” Becca was trying to keep the frustration from her voice.
“Because the town hated the place. It reminded them that they hadn’t lived up to that promise we all learned about.”
Becca gripped the mug tightly. “I still don’t see the connection.”
Mrs. Browning sighed, as if Becca were a particularly slow student. “They used the fire to round up the strangers and herd them to the nat. Do I need to spell it out for you?”
“You’re saying the town killed these strangers,” Becca asked, “and buried them under the nat?”
“Yes.” Mrs. Browning sounded exasperated.
“How many?”
“I don’t know. No one kept records. I heard that they tried to bury them under the hotel, and when that didn’t work, they went to the nat. That’s why the ghosts haunt the hotel.”
“You’d think they’d haunt the nat,” Becca said.
“Hauntings aren’t logical,” Mrs. Browning said.
None of this was, Becca thought. “How do you know that these strangers were aliens, not just a group of Eastern Europeans who ran into some people who didn’t understand them?” “Because of the stories,” Mrs. Browning said. “They had glowing eyes. They talked gibberish. They could seem taller than they were. And they came from nowhere. There were no wagon tracks. There was no wagon. And these people had no idea how people behaved. Not how Americans behaved, but how human beings behaved. They had to learn it all.”
Becca shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Browning. But humans differ greatly. And if this group had been from a very different culture, the residents of Hope could have made the same charge. Aliens is as far-fetched as it came.”
Mrs. Browning smiled sadly. “I believe it was aliens.”
“Why?” Becca asked.
“Because I met one,” Mrs. Browning said.
THEN
The train was big and dirty and smelly. Ash fell everywhere. It made an awful noise and she wanted to run away from it.
Jess Taylor stood beside her, holding her hand. He’d borrowed his neighbor’s wagon, and they’d come to the small town of Brothers, which was two stops away from Hope.
“Remember,” he said. “Tomorrow, you come here, and give the nice man this paper, and then you get on the train going that direction.”
He pointed. He’d already shown her the engine, and how you could tell what direction a train was going in.
“I’ll meet you at the station, and we’ll pretend that we haven’t seen each other in years. Okay?”
He’d told her all this before, and then it sounded easy, but now it just sounded terrifying. She wanted to get back in the wagon, get back in his house, and hide there forever.
But he said, now that her people were gone, she needed to have a life.
Where will I have this life? she asked him.
In Hope, he said. With me.
Momma and Daddy said humans didn’t do these things, they didn’t make that kind of commitment, they didn’t understand permanence and obligation and responsibility, which made them dangerous.
But Jess Taylor wasn’t dangerous. And he seemed to understand all those words. He seemed to live them.
Only they came back now that she was standing on the platform with him, staring at the train.
“It’s only one night,” he said. “I already paid for the room. You’ll be safe.”
She wanted to believe him. But she was scared. What if she changed by accident? What if she said something wrong? Would they make her scream? Would they bury her without a box? Who would tell Jess Taylor?
How would he ever know?
NOW
“I was just a little girl,” Mrs. Browning said, “and she was very old. Older than anyone I’d ever seen. She came to the natatorium when I was swimming there. She cried.”
“She cried?” Becca asked.
Mrs. Browning nodded. “She stood back from the pool, and she cried as she looked at it. My mother was there with me, and she just stared. Then she told me to get my towel. It was time to go.”
“I don’t understand,” Becca said. “How do you know the old woman was an alien.”
“There’d always been stories about her,” Mrs. Browning said. “She came to town to see her uncle, and she never left. At least that was the story, and some people claimed they saw her get off the train. But a few said the luggage she carried was her uncle’s, and that he’
d brought her there that very afternoon.” “So?” Becca asked.
“So that was right after the massacre. It was strange that he had a niece no one had ever heard of.”
Becca shrugged. “I’m so sorry to be skeptical, Mrs. Browning, but I still don’t understand how that translates to alien.”
“I saw her once, all by myself. She was sitting at a bus stop near the old bank, and she put her hand on the bench. Her hand slid right through it.”
Becca sighed. “You’re not going to convince me. Not without some kind of real proof.”
“What about those bodies, young lady?” Mrs. Browning said, bringing herself up as close to her old height as she could. “Are those good enough for you? They’re not human, are they?”
Becca flashed on the broken femurs, so recognizable. “Of course they are.”
Mrs. Browning’s cheeks flushed. “You’re just saying that.”
“Actually,” Becca said, “I’m not.”
THEN
That night, she slept on a single bed behind the kitchen of Mrs. Mother’s Brothers Boardinghouse. Colored people—which was her and Jess Taylor, apparently—didn’t get their own rooms. They couldn’t even really stay at the boardinghouse, but Jess Taylor knew the cook, who volunteered to share her room. Mrs. Mother, the old lady who ran the place, had frowned in that mean way some humans had, but all she said was, “Make sure it doesn’t get into the food.”
She didn’t understand for the longest time that the “it” Mrs. Mother referred to was her.
Maybe that’s why Daddy said this was a dangerous place, why humans were scary people. She hadn’t even known they cared about differences, and now she was finding out that the differences were everything.
No wonder they’d gone after her people. She hadn’t noticed Jess Taylor’s differences from the men at the bank and as time went on, she began to understand how badly her own people had mimicked the humans. No knee dimples, too smooth skin, eyes that didn’t blink.
If the dark skin or the long braid of hair running down the back or the upswept eye angle scared them, they must’ve been really terrified by a whole group of people whose skin had no wrinkles, whose ankles didn’t stick out, and whose expressions never changed.
No wonder.
Then she remembered Jess Taylor: I can’t believe I’m defending them and she knew just how he felt.
The bed in the kitchen had bugs. They bit her during the night. Upstairs people laughed, and the place smelled like grease, and she wanted some water, just so she could wash the bugs off, but she didn’t.
She picked them off and squished them between her fingers, and finally she got out of that bed and sat in a rocking chair, and watched out the window until the sun came up.
Then she picked up her little bag and walked to the train station, just like Jess Taylor had told her to do, and she sat on the far edge of the platform so no one but the man who worked there saw her, and she waited for the train.
NOW
Becca was happy to leave. Mrs. Browning did tell her other stories about the natatorium—stories about its first few days as a recreation center, stories about the celebrities who used it—but both Becca and Mrs. Browning knew that the stories were merely Mrs. Browning’s way of saving face.
As Becca made her goodbyes, holding a piece of that delicious coffee cake in a napkin, both she and Mrs. Browning knew that she would never really trust Mrs. Browning again.
All the way to her car, Becca tried not to let sadness overwhelm her. She had lost more than a source for Hope’s history. She’d lost an icon of her youth.
She had always believed that Abigail Browning was a woman of unassailable intellect and integrity. Even through the Conyers’ scandal, Becca’s opinion did not change. She still nodded at Abigail Browning on the street when others hadn’t, and she still revered the woman she had once known.
If anything, the scandal had clarified something for her: Becca finally understood why Mrs. Browning, who had always seemed more knowledgeable than Mr. Conyers, had stopped working at the Hope Historical Society.
Now Becca wasn’t so sure. Now she wondered if Mrs. Browning was fired because she believed the strange stories—the ones that had always been part of Hope. Stories of ghosts and aliens and things that went bump in the night.
Becca got into the squad and turned the ignition. The crappy air-conditioning felt worse than the heat in Mrs. Browning’s garden. Maybe if Becca believed in fairy tales, she would actually believe that Mrs. Browning had some sort of magic that kept the heat and the desert at bay.
But Becca only believed in reality. And only the reality she could see, Chase used to say. She could never envision his projects, not even when she looked at the architectural renderings.
She always had to wait until he was done to understand how perfect his vision had been.
What had Mrs. Browning said about Chase? You confused him with your father, who was a horrid, manipulative man, and you forgot that men can be strong without being horrid.
That’s what Becca should have asked about. She should have asked what Mrs. Browning meant by that statement—not about Chase: women who hadn’t married Chase loved him (hell, Becca still loved him)—but about her father.
Tell me about your father, her therapist said once.
He was a good man, Becca said.
But he didn't like your job.
Becca had smiled. He was old-fashioned. He believed women didn't belong outside the home.
What about in a police car?
Becca had laughed. Are you kidding? He stopped paying for my school when he heard what I wanted to do.
Is Chase like him?
Of course not, Becca said.
But your father's action sounds manipulative. You say Chase is manipulative.
Not like that, Becca said. He respects women.
Does he respect you?
Becca sighed and leaned back against the seat of the squad. Did he respect her? Yesterday, she would have said no, and she would have said that his secretive call about the nat proved it.
But couldn’t it also be viewed the other way? Couldn’t his call be a sign of trust, of faith in her abilities instead of faith in his own ability to control her?
Could Mrs. Browning be right?
Becca shook her head. A headache was forming between her eyes. She put the squad in gear just as her cell rang.
She unhooked it from her belt and looked at the display. Jillian Mills. Becca took the call.
“Can you come down here?” Jillian asked.
“Is this about the nat?” Becca asked.
“Yeah,” Jillian said. “I have the weirdest results.”
THEN
They took her ticket just like Jess Taylor said they would, but they wouldn’t let her sit in a chair like everybody else. They put her on one of the platforms in the back. The ash and the dirt and the stink were awful there, and as the train started to pull away, she could see the rails move.
She tried the door to get inside, but someone had locked it. She pounded on it, and the men in the nearby chairs—the men with white skin—laughed at her and pointed and she moved away from the blackened window so that they couldn’t see her any more.
She was afraid they’d come out and hurt her.
Like they hurt her momma.
Like they hurt Jess Taylor’s family.
She was scared now, and she tried not to let that change her. Because if she changed, she’d lose this chance. She’d spend her life—what was left of it—as a railing or a board or a doorknob. And then, because she couldn’t sleep-change, she’d starve and fall off, all decayed, and they’d toss her aside—what is that dried-up thing?—and she’d die, probably in the nearby sagebrush, all alone.
Just like her daddy.
The whole trip, she stared straight ahead and clung to her bag and thought about Jess Taylor waiting for her. Thought about shoulders and backs and legs and human forms so that the spikes wouldn’t come out of her spine o
r her eyes wouldn’t shift to a different part of her head.
She thought and thought and was surprised when she realized she could hardly wait to get back to Hope.
NOW
Becca’s stomach clenched the entire way to the coroner’s office. She wished she hadn’t eaten that coffee cake now. She wished she hadn’t gone to Mrs. Browning’s. She didn’t want the thoughts that were crowding her brain. She didn’t want to think the weird results were because some aliens were massacred in Hope.
And yet she was thinking just that.
The coroner’s office was on a side street behind Hope’s main police station. The office wasn’t an office at all, more like a science lab, morgue, and training area rolled into one.
The college student who ran the front desk in exchange for rent in the studio apartment above was reading Dostoyevsky. He barely looked up as Becca entered.
“She’s expecting you,” he said.
Becca nodded and continued to the small room that served as Jillian’s office. The smell of decay and formaldehyde seemed less here than it did near the door, and wasn’t nearly as strong as it was in the basement where the autopsies actually took place.
Jillian was standing behind her desk, sorting paper files. She wore a clean white smock over her clothes—a sure sign that she had just finished an autopsy—and had her hair pulled back with a copper barrette.
“Your life just got easier,” Jillian said without preamble.
“How’s that?” Becca asked.
“Close the door.”
Becca did.
“I did some preliminary work before calling the state crime lab,” Jillian said. “Those bodies down there, they’re not human.”
Becca felt a shiver run down her back.
“Pm not sure what they are. I’m not even sure they are bodies.”
Becca gripped the back of the nearest chair. She didn’t want Mrs. Browning to be right.
“What are they, then? Aliens?”
Jillian laughed. “Of course not. Whatever gave you that idea?”
Alien Crimes Page 27