“Maybe vandals,” Hal murmured to his grill, flipping an enormous pancake with one hand and cracking eggs with the other.
Marcia knew all about the San Luis Valley and the plague of cattle and horse mutilations. The first and most famous mutilation was in fact Snippy the horse, found dead with no blood, no predator tracks around the body, and stripped of flesh from legs and face. This was in 1967, twenty years after the supposed crash landing of a UFO in Roswell, New Mexico.
Snippy was actually a young mare named Lady, a beloved pet of a woman named Nellie Lewis. Snippy, her sire, had such an evocative name that the press couldn’t resist attaching the name to Lady. Few people knew the story of Nellie and her own mysterious death. Marcia did. She’d read about the San Luis Valley for months before her trip. The valley averaged at least one mutilation a month, sometimes more. Many people reported fast, silent lights, orange or white or blue, zipping across the high night. Often military aircraft screamed after the intruders, though the Air Force always denied any activities.
The most interesting aspect of the UFO stories surrounding the valley was the mutilations. Here was evidence, actual physical evidence, unexplainable. The mutilated animals were found with no blood. Their reproductive organs were removed with cuts so precise the cell walls showed cauterization under a microscope. Sometimes the facial skin and tissue were removed as well, like the hapless Lady. Often the bodies showed no insect life, no small animal predation, and no sign of decay. All Earth’s creatures, even flies, shunned the bodies.
After a great deal of adverse publicity, what Marcia would categorize as disinformation from government agents, cattle mutilations seemingly stopped. The reports of mutilations had gone underground. The local ranchers reported their livestock losses as predator losses. Insurance companies would then pay their fees and not hassle the ranchers with talk of UFOs and little gray men.
“So I heard the lady on the dunes was found the same way as the cattle,” Tony the rancher confided.
“But they never take people,” the other rancher said. Marcia knew them by face as well as voice now. This one was younger than Tony, about the same age as the schoolteacher Daniel Grantham.
“That’s not true,” Tony said. “I read up on the Internet last night. Did you ever hear of a man named Bill English?”
Marcia, who had, sipped her coffee and stared into the distance as though she weren’t listening to every word at the table at the end of the bar.
“He was part of a Special Forces investigative team that went in to retrieve a downed B-52 bomber in Laos back in seventy-one. The plane had gone off radar after sending some very strange transmissions, something about a large light and ‘under attack by a UFO.’ ”
Tony had the table’s rapt attention now. Marcia noticed Daniel’s distressed look. He knew this story too.
“So they found the plane, intact, and crew, not intact at all. They were all dead, all mutilated just like my cattle, and when Bill English tried to reveal this information, he was discharged from the military and his reputation was ruined. He’s been trying to tell his story ever since, and no one listens.”
“Not exactly,” Daniel murmured.
“Then there’s Jonathan Louette,” Tony continued. “He was a sergeant in the Air Force at the White Sands Missile Test Range back in 1956. An Air Force major witnessed his abduction by a ‘disk-shaped’ object at two o’clock in the morning while they were searching for missile debris after a test. He turned up several days later, dead, his eyes gone, blood removed, and his privates—”
Tony cut off abruptly. Hal was leaning over Tony with a heavy spatula in his hand, glowering.
“Well, you know what I mean,” Tony said to his coffee cup, and Hal turned back to his grill.
“The Internet,” Daniel sighed, speaking to Tony’s fascinated audience. “What used to take months of research now takes minutes. But Bill English’s story of the B-52 pilots is just rumor, Tony. Sergeant Louette’s story was told by a guy named John Lear and it has never been corroborated either.”
“And the Guarapiranga mutilation down in Brazil? That dead guy, he’s a rumor too?”
Marcia blinked. That was an interesting mutilation, heavily suppressed by the Brazilian government. A man was found by the Guarapiranga reservoir in 1988, apparently a victim of a Jack-the-Ripper kind of sadistic killer. The doctors who autopsied him were not cattle mutilation experts, so they didn’t recognize the signs of a UFO-style mutilation. The removal of organs, the lack of signs of struggle, and the precise and bloodless cuts puzzled them. The man’s eyes and genitals were missing as well as many of his internal organs and parts of his brain, all through tiny circles punched through various parts of the victim’s body.
The detectives who were assigned to the case—which was never solved—were fascinated by the strangeness of the murder, and eventually the pictures were bootlegged onto the World Wide Web. From there, the UFO community came to full alert.
Nothing happened after that, of course. The Brazilian government sat firmly on the evidence and declared that it had never happened. Once again, a chance for proof was hidden away.
“So now we have one right here, after years of my poor cattle being ripped apart and nobody wants to listen,” Tony was saying.
“I have a strong feeling, Tony,” Daniel the teacher said solemnly, “that you’re not going to like it when people do start to listen. You really want Hard Copy making you look like some stupid country yokel with a UFO story?”
“Somebody has to listen. Whoever this girl was, she’s dead now. I don’t want my daughter to be next.”
This sent a chill through the people at the table. Hal, briskly cooking eggs and bacon and hotcakes, paused with spatula in hand. He eyed the busy, bustling restaurant, then turned and walked to the table.
“Well, folks, we just have to be careful. Whether it was UFOs or some ordinary killer, it doesn’t matter much, now does it? We have to watch our kids and our wives and be careful.”
With this calm assessment, Hal returned to his eggs. As the waitress placed her breakfast in front of her, Marcia looked at the schoolteacher. She knew what he was. When she left, she placed a slip of paper neatly under the brake line of his bicycle. On it was her phone number and a brief message.
10
Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado
“This was not what I ordered, Roger,” Jacob Mitchell said pleasantly.
“He almost killed Scott,” Roger Bennett said, as relaxed as a cat. He was sprawled in Mitchell’s office chair. Bennett had gray hair but the rest of him was built like a twenty-year-old weightlifter. His face had the odd, flat look of a habitual steroid user. He’d been turned down by the Marines, long ago. Mitchell had seen the report; Bennett had failed the psyche board, not the strength requirements. Bennett, unaware why he failed, spent two years in bodybuilding only to fail again. His bodybuilding frenzy intensified. He failed enlistment in every branch of the military, the FBI, and the Colorado Police Academy. Eventually, he’d ended up in a security firm as a bodyguard. Mitchell saw a kindred spirit in Bennett as soon as he first saw him standing quietly outside his Congressional office at the Capitol. Mitchell could sense the simmering bitterness behind the stony face.
Bennett held a can of soda pop in one hand and took a long drink before he went on. “He smacked him with a file cabinet drawer. A drawer. He could have killed him.”
“Really,” Mitchell said. He rubbed the corner of his jaw with one hand. His muscles there were bunched tight as marbles. Any member of his staff, seeing that gesture, would shrink into themselves and find something to do that took them as far away as possible.
Mitchell was a powerful congressman—well, had been a powerful congressman—and he led a stressful life. He didn’t smoke or drink. He knew he was highly intelligent and clever, and he was blessed with craggy good looks and a gorgeous voice. He’d been born with good looks; one only had to look at his baby pictures to see that. After a br
ief period of terrible acne in high school, he’d come into maturity, with height and breadth and looks enhanced by the pits the acne left.
But the stupid voters had turned him out of office, the fools. He’d been orchestrating a political life since middle school, and when he had achieved the position of Colorado Congressman, he thought the White House was only a few years away.
He was beaten by an aw-shucks opponent, a man whose campaign was based on his experience running a remodeling business. Mitchell didn’t look back, not for long. His goal was to be President, of course, and there was more than one former President who’d lost a few campaigns before taking the highest office in the world. When he was assigned Secret Service protection during the Presidential primary race, he felt completely at home. This was what he was born to do. This was what he was born to be. That was four years ago. His Secret Service protection was withdrawn after it was clear he would not win the primary. The past four years had been spent on an alternative plan for his lifelong goal.
Now Roger Bennett, his strong right arm, had endangered the whole plan. It was disturbing.
“Did Scott leave any blood in Leetsdale’s office?” Mitchell asked, still rubbing at his jaw like a philosopher contemplating an interesting question. Bennett finished the soda pop and dropped it into Mitchell’s wastebasket. He took out a stir stick and twirled it in his fingers. Bennett was never without his supply of plastic stir sticks, his one nervous habit. He would chew them methodically, mangling them with his teeth until they were wadded balls of plastic. Then, like a chain smoker, he would take out the next stir stick before he spat the first into the wastebasket. His soda pop done, he was ready for a stick.
“No, he caught him with the flat part so Scott just has one hell of a concussion,” Bennett said. “Anyway, Leetsdale had Scott down and was coming right at me so I shot him.” He put the stick in his mouth and gave it an initial chomp. Mitchell folded his hands carefully, containing his rage.
“In the eye,” he said coldly.
“In the eye,” Bennett admitted. “I missed. But we did everything else perfectly. I loaded low powder bullets so the back of his head didn’t blow. We rolled him in the rug we brought and placed him by the cannon and left the gun in his hand. I even left the other low-powder bullets in the gun. No prints, no evidence, a clean suicide.”
“Except nobody shoots themselves in the eye,” Mitchell shouted. “You fucked up! The little skirt, Bandimere, already told me that the Colorado Springs detectives think it was a murder. That skinny bitch and the fucking Indian, they’re looking for evidence.”
“They won’t find it,” Bennett promised, his eyes like angry pinpoints.
“If they do, you might have to take care of them, too,” Mitchell said. “And it will have to look like an accident.”
“Killing cops?” Bennett said doubtfully, taking the mangled stick out of his mouth. “Sir, killing cops is never a good—”
“I’ll tell you what’s a good idea or not,” Mitchell said. “Shooting a man in the eye, that’s a bad idea. We’ll just wait and see if these two are any good. If they are, they’re going to be very dead.”
“Yes, sir,” Bennett said stiffly. “I’ll come up with a plan.”
“Good,” Mitchell said with warmth. His voice was instantly soothing, calm and reassuring. Time for honey, after the sting. “I need you, Roger.”
“I know,” Bennett said with a smile in his voice. “You won’t be disappointed.”
Mitchell turned to look out his window, rubbing the clenched muscles of his jaw. Bennett left the room as soundlessly as a cat.
This was only a setback, he told himself. Leetsdale was dead. O’Dell was dead. Everyone else on the project was his, body and soul.
Mitchell sighed and stretched. Sometimes he felt that Bennett was more than his right-hand man. Bennett was his other half, his shadow set free on the world. Bennett hadn’t batted an eye when Mitchell reluctantly ordered him to kill O’Dell. Mitchell emptied a bottle of whiskey the night O’Dell had died. He was stricken, unable to bear the thought of kindly, pudgy O’Dell no longer a living, breathing creature. Bennett wasn’t bothered by O’Dell’s death, even though he himself had blown a neat hole in the computer programmer’s chest. O’Dell had begged for mercy, Bennett reported casually, but he didn’t trust a man’s word under the round eye of a gun.
Then there was Lori Leetsdale, killed by accident in the Burbank earthquake. And Jim Leetsdale, a year later. Victims, both of them, victims like O’Dell. But they had died for a cause much greater than they knew. There was so much riding on his shoulders right now. So many lives depended on him, millions of lives. He couldn’t let anyone stand in his way now. Not when he was so close.
San Luis Valley, Colorado
Halfway to the Rio Grand River, Alan suddenly remembered the name of the Air Force officer with whom Krista had been working. The day was just beginning. Sam Williams insisted he go fishing this morning. Beth had agreed, which sealed the decision. The last thing Alan Baxter needed to do was hang around and feel depressed about his poor friend Krista, they decided. The best thing would be some fine trout, an early morning hatch, and a healthy communion with nature. Perhaps because he wasn’t thinking about Krista right then, the name sprang into his mind.
“Leetsdale!” Alan exclaimed, and gave the steering wheel a little smack with his fist. “Major Leetsdale. I’ll have to call the sheriff when I get home.” Then Alan reconsidered. Would Gonzalez mind if Alan took a quick trip up to Colorado Springs and talked to Leetsdale? With his workload, Gonzalez might appreciate a little amateur help. Alan immediately shook his head at the thought. Gonzalez was a professional and wouldn’t appreciate Alan Baxter, elderly amateur detective, messing with his case.
But maybe he would do a little harmless snooping. He couldn’t go back to fishing when Krista’s murderer still walked free. And Colorado Springs was only a few hours away. He picked a spot on the highway to turn around, and he put on his blinker.
Gaming Center, Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado
Joe Tanner sat alone in the Gaming Center, his feet folded comfortably beneath him. The computer screen in front of him was lit with a picture of the earth from a low orbit. At this height, only a tiny slice of black space showed beyond the curve of the planet. The atmosphere swirled with clouds.
“No clouds,” Joe muttered to himself. He typed rapidly. The clouds disappeared from the screen, leaving an earth that looked blue and brown instead of blue and white. Brown for land. Brown for dirt.
“Let’s take the dirt view,” Joe said. He often talked himself through a difficult problem. Art Bailey, his old friend, had taught him that trick. When Art and Joe were in their frenzied last days before a major war game, an observer would have thought they were crazy. Each one would talk to their screen, ignoring the other one. It was a strange sort of three-way conversation among Art, Joe, and their supercomputer.
Art was dead over a year now, and Joe still missed him fiercely. Particularly when he had a difficult problem like this one. What were these coordinates all about? They were larger than citywide but less than countrywide, he’d determined that already. They were time-driven. Each one had a stamp and each coordinate progressed in location as the times progressed.
Joe had spent the entire day inserting the data Eileen had given him into his war-game program. It felt strange to see the earth without missile silos or submarines or country boundaries. He’d gotten rid of all of them one by one as he determined that the data had nothing to do with military transport or weaponry.
“What now?” he said, but the back part of his brain was already supplying the answer. He’d color coordinate the time-stamped data, so that the colors would correspond to the coordinates as they changed with time. That would tell him what was going on. Maybe.
Joe worked for the next two hours without lifting his head and thought he’d been working only fifteen minutes. Computers were like that. You sat down for a little while and when
you stood up you were sore all over and you had to pee so badly your eyes were crossed. He sighed and strapped on his sandals. He jogged to the bathroom and then took a quick run to the stairwells to pick up a can of soda pop, working his way through submarine-style doors and coded doorways and back again without noticing his surroundings.
When he returned, his code had compiled and was ready to run. Joe opened his can of soda pop and sat back in his chair.
“Illuminate me,” he said, and pressed the return key.
Special Investigations Bureau, Colorado Springs, Colorado
“You’re sure this is a murder?” Harben asked. His face was expressionless as always but his hands were clasped on top of his spotless desk. For Harben, this was the equivalent of a screaming fit.
“Positive,” Eileen said. She was worried, though. The evidence was all circumstantial at the moment. The autopsy was still being done. Without a good piece of corroborating evidence, they wouldn’t be able to get a verdict of murder at the inquest. She and Dave Rosen were sitting in Harben’s office in the late afternoon, and that was worrisome. Harben’s clasped hands were even more worrisome. Before Eileen could express her thoughts, Rosen did it for her.
“Where’s the pressure coming from?”
“The police commissioner. The mayor. The general in charge of Peterson Air Force Base. I’m expecting a call from the Governor, the President, and, possibly, God.”
“Make sure you ask Him who killed Leetsdale,” Eileen said dryly.
“Mitchell’s putting the pressure on,” Rosen said.
“He was a Colorado congressman for two terms,” Harben said. “And he’s running a big government project out at Peterson. And he’s the district-wide FEMA director.”
“The what?” Eileen asked. “Isn’t that for floods, or whatever?”
“FEMA is the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” Rosen said, his eyebrows raised. “This district would mean the entire western states, wouldn’t it?”
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