In the back of the van, the ramp had been pulled down to the gravel lot. Bill tromped up it. He sniffed and took a look around the cargo hold.
There.
In the far corner.
A dusty pile.
Bill scooped up a few of the little white prills, which crushed like snowballs into a crystallized powder.
Bingo.
The fertilizer hadn’t been soaking in fuel, but who cared? He now knew what Rat had lied to him about.
In the shelter of the van, Bill hid for a second, searching his Tether for a particular app. He flicked past pages of crap like the Go Nuclear app, and Zombie Crack, where you got to shoot all the living dead townspeople of Cracked Rock in the head.
“There,” he said, punching the lie detector app. He tested it first. “I’m an alcoholic.”
He thought for a second, then added, “Janice Gregory was just a good friend.”
That one actually stung. He’d expected
The lie detector suggested a follow-up question.
Wishing he had chosen softer hardballs to throw at himself, Bill climbed down out of the van, and, drawing his gun, he went a’hunting.
He checked the Martian’s trailers first, checked the range and refrigerator graveyards after that, then the salvage yard and the noxious weed garden left to grow amok in rows of old toilets.
“Marvin!” he called out, starting his second tour of the yard. “Hey, Marv!”
Bill even checked down the Dead Zone, Marv’s maze of copper, aluminum, and lead. He moved those crates of old lead paint, and a few other suspicious boxes down the way, but even with Steve’s description of the place, Bill had no clue where to find Marv’s little hidey-hole, his Shack of Silence. The place was a big maze.
He picked again at the junior deputy star.
“Oh, shit,” he said, finally understanding the significance of the empty van, why it had been leaving the data center.
This time when Bill tore back across the valley, there was no school bus.
“Aaron, I need backup at Harcum. The data center. You should call PCo, too, get those people the hell out of there. And get a bomb squad on the phone.”
“Oh my God, Bill, what’s wrong?”
He slowed down through an intersection. There was one oncoming car, but it was a ways back. Bill shot across. “I’m hoping not another false alarm,” he said.
Bill made it to the data center before any of his backup could arrive. He was surprised the PCo employees weren’t lined up outside in the evacuation area, shivering in the cold. Although he didn’t see any cars in the parking lot.
The brick fortress had one door, a solid fire door. No windows. Just a retinal scan and a camera looking down from the brick.
“It’s Deputy Bill Biggs!” he shouted, hammering on the door. “Please, we need to evacuate!”
No answer.
He tried a few more times, then looked into the camera.
“There’s been a bomb threat, please open up!”
Nothing.
“Damn it,” Bill said, scanning the empty lot. No one here? Didn’t matter. There was a ton of money in property right here. All that brick? Not to mention the millions of dollars of hardware and data inside.
Bill strode around the building, looking for any targets where the bomb might be planted, like a junction box or propane tank; a gas line of any kind. Anything someone might target to maximize damage. He didn’t see any such utilities. Just smooth brick walls, no power lines whatsoever.
Underground? Bill thought.
Fiber optics for the communications?
By the time backup arrived, Bill was making his way uphill where Harcum had hidden his dead Indians. He looked back, trying to get a peek at the PCo roof. Albeit, he had no clue how Marvin could possibly have hoisted a fertilizer bomb up there. Usually those types of bombs, a mix of fertilizer and fuel, were stored in a collection of fifty-gallon drums.
Deputy Caruthers waved to him from the lot. Bill waved back and pulled out his Tether. He opened the Spyglass app, feeling a twinge when he saw the icon, the tiny pair of novelty binoculars.
“What the hell?” Bill said, zooming in on the PCo roof. No AC unit, no fans. No heater or conduit of any kind. No ventilation system. Instead of a liquid membrane or some other kind of normal roofing, the top of the PCo data center was constructed of pure brick. He’d never seen anything like it.
Still under construction?
Bill had thought they’d finished the building, but then again no one had come to the door. This would explain it. Cursing, Bill started downhill toward Caruthers.
A second later his earwig buzzed.
“Everything all right?” Aaron asked when Bill picked up.
“Yeah, I’m thinking of calling this off.”
“False alarm?”
“Starting to look like it. You already . . .”
“I did. The bomb squad’s on its way.”
“From Helena?”
“Missoula.”
“Damn it. All right.”
“Sorry, Bill.”
“Hey, not your fault. You ought to get someone from PCo to let the squad in, sweep the inside of the building just in case, and, uh . . .”
Bill stopped walking.
“Bill?”
“I’ll call you back.”
“O—” she began, but Bill hung up.
On the road defining the eastern border of the property, Barksdale was trotting north, up the hill.
“Biggs, what the hell?” Caruthers called from the parking lot. Bill waved him away, jumped the ditch, and followed Barksdale up the mountain.
CHAPTER 20
Kids flooded the hall, and JJ used The Wand to scan their hoodies and coats, their backpacks and secret pockets. He scanned lockers, too, in each of the main halls: sixth, seventh, eighth grade. He spotted a few well-concealed knives, but no guns.
Not for the first time, JJ wished he were in high school. Surely, they’d have guns. It was right there in their music.
Cars, he thought, and headed outside.
Cars were still pouring in, dropping kids off. JJ started toward the lot.
Surely, someone in the faculty or staff was a card-carrying gun enthusiast. The janitor, Red Beard? There was a rifle rack in the back window of his Dodge. He kept the rack empty at school, but who knew what he hid under the seat?
Right outside the main entrance, JJ ran into a group of kids on the front lawn.
“Look at it!” the Dick said, standing at the core of the group. “What the hell’s it doing?”
JJ followed the Dick’s finger into the sky. A prop plane circled HMS like some buzzard, drawing something in white mist.
“I saw an older girl,” one of the sixth graders said. “She was using her phone to control an airplane.”
The Dick hocked a wad of phlegm on the grass. “Bollocks,” he said, all without ever looking down.
“No, it’s true,” a sixth-grader girl chimed in. “I was there.”
“Yeah, and I can drive our lawnmower with my phone.”
“Shut up, seventh-grader,” the Dick said, punching the kid in the arm. “It’s doing something, look.”
The plane made its last flourish before taking off, trailing mist.
“Is that a heart?” the sixth-grader girl asked.
The Dick smiled. “A heart with a penis stabbed through it.”
“You’re a penis,” JJ said.
The group of kids laughed—until the Dick planted another fist in the seventh-grader’s arm.
“Oh, hey there, Sister Kisser,” the Dick said, leering. This time when the kids laughed, the Dick didn’t punch any arms. But the seventh-grader did flick him a wary glance.
Let them laugh, JJ thought.
The sound would echo in his head, an
d he’d see more inkblots, more stylized brains, cackling.
Let them.
He sighed at the writing in the sky. Here someone had all this power literally at their fingertips, and they used it to draw a stupid arrow through an even stupider heart.
JJ stepped toward the lot, waving The Wand over the rows and rows of cars, trucks, and vans.
“Bell,” the Dick said as it started ringing. All the other kids began flocking inside.
When the Dick realized JJ wasn’t coming, he stopped at the double glass doors. “I’ll tell your dad I saw you skipping,” he said with a smirk. JJ returned the smile as the Dick held the door for him.
* * *
Huffing it up the hill after Barksdale, Bill tried to figure everything out. Either Mrs. Hayworth had failed him at math, or the answer to two plus two had changed, because nothing was adding up.
The fertilizer.
The moving van.
The data center and its puzzling construction.
And the bomb . . .
Where the hell had Marvin stashed his bomb? Bill had checked the obvious spots, so where the hell was it? And why had the Martian visited the data center if not to blow it up?
It didn’t make sense.
Courthouse, Bill thought. That was one place he hadn’t checked, a frequent target of the Martian’s protests. Schools, too, I guess.
Bill quickly discarded that thought. Sure, Marvin had tried to blow up the PCo tour bus right outside HMS, but blowing up a bunch of innocent kids for no reason?
No way, Bill thought as Barksdale kept hiking toward HMS.
* * *
JJ sat in the back of Mr. Zeitlow’s class. It made it easier to hide his Tether behind the table, the kind with the sink and burners built into it.
His Tether had buzzed, a push notification from Drones. Apparently, another player, someone named Fenstermacher, had given him a gift to download. A brand-new map.
“Cells are the fundamental units of life,” Mr. Zeitlow was saying. JJ pretended to pay attention for a second, then looked down again at his phone.
He joined the battle at Cracked Rock. The war hadn’t started yet, but he had a mission: Find a gun. He checked his arsenal and found one weapon. A Tether.
The phone in the game came equipped with the same apps as JJ’s, including The Wand. He found he could walk his character around the halls at HMS, scanning lockers for guns. As he passed the main office, he caught his character’s reflection in the window.
He’d recognize that face from anywhere. It’d been on the news, in the papers, and all over the net. It usually showed up every time people got upset about gun control.
The boy in the glass, see-through like a ghost, was the HMS shooter, the alien, Jaime Vedder.
* * *
Bill nearly cried out. “I thought I shut you off.” He didn’t even have the Dragnet glasses with him, just the earwig. The glasses sat in his cruiser, way back in the PCo parking lot. He was almost to HMS.
“Ignore,” Bill said, sending Aaron’s call to voicemail.
“No—ignore!”
“Excuse me?” Aaron said.
“Oh, hey, Aaron.” Bill rolled his eyes at Barksdale when the German shepherd looked back, mid-trot.
“Why haven’t you answered my calls?”
“Sorry. Right in the thick of it here.”
“Are you running?” Aaron asked.
Felt like it. “Walking uphill. Look, just have the squad sweep the building. I’ll report back.”
“They already swept it.”
“Really? Someone come and let them in?”
“Nope. They knocked. PCo let them right inside.”
“You gotta be kidding me.”
“I guess you didn’t knock hard enough.”
“Well, did they find anything?” Bill said.
“No. Bill, what’s going on? Caruthers said you ran off.”
He breathed heavily for a moment, hoofing it up the last rise to HMS, the citadel on the hill. The Noble Miner waved to him from the flag.
“I guess that makes sense,” Bill said to himself. “Barks would’ve pointed it out if something were there.”
He could hear Aaron stop typing in the background. “Wait, that’s why you ran off? To follow Steve’s dog?”
“Look, I know the sheriff’s probably pissed—”
“You called in a bomb squad, Bill.”
“I know, but listen, I’m following Barks now. Caruthers and those guys can handle their own with the bomb squad, I’m sure—”
“And the bomb squad commander? Can they handle their own with him?”
“Sheriff can. That’s his plate. And I’ll answer for myself, you know I will. I just want to follow up on one more lead. Then I’ll be there for the sheriff to throw me under the bus or whatever it is he’s got to do.”
At the crest of the hill, Barksdale disappeared into the parking lot. Bill didn’t see anyone loitering around the school grounds.
All in class, he thought.
“Hey, Bill,” Aaron said. “Hold on a sec.”
He heard her hand cover the mic of her headset, followed by her muffled voice. She said something about taking a bathroom break, and when she came back on, she was practically whispering.
“Bill, I thought I should tell you. It’s more than just today. What with the warrant and you harassing Marvin and Rat—”
“Harassing?”
“Not my words, but yes. For some reason, you refuse to do the background check for Dragnet, and then there was the accident.”
“I’m fine,” Bill said.
“No.”
“What?” Aaron said.
“No background check.”
Aaron didn’t say anything for a second. “Why, though?”
Bill sighed.
“Everyone else, they had no problem.”
“Not true,” Bill said. “I mean, can you explain to me how the hell a pair of glasses knows how many affairs someone’s had? Like Caruthers, how the hell did it know all that?”
“He did it through websites,” Aaron said.
“So? What does it do, send moles or whatever, looking for anything he’s ever done?”
“I don’t know how it works, Bill.”
“And who the hell should know stuff like that anyway, ’sides his wife?”
“I just thought I should tell you,” Aaron said. “I heard the sheriff say you were under too much stress.”
She didn’t have to say what that meant. It was code for Bill would probably be taking some “time off” soon. And maybe the sheriff would make him see the shrink. Again.
“I just thought I should tell you. I’m worried about you,” Aaron said. Bill heard the toilet flush and knew the conversation was over.
They hung up and Bill spotted Barks in the lot, lifting his leg and dousing someone’s car tire.
Lunch lady’s, Bill thought, recognizing the car and license plate. Barksdale went to another vehicle in the lot. Red Beard’s truck. He sniffed at the tire before giving it a splash, too.
“Seriously, this is what you brought me here for? To pee on some cars?”
Barks ignored him. He marked one last vehicle, Steve’s, then led Bill behind the school to the baseball diamond, to the pasture beyond. From there, they ducked through a fence and walked through a rest area, which marked a trailhead to one of the many nature trails in the county.
This trail led up into the trees of Cracked Mountain. Bill had hiked it many times before. Not only was it the most scenic route to the quarry, it also paralleled Broken Road to the mine. Bill followed Barksdale up to the old gravel road via a steep deer trail. From there, he looked down at Marvin’s junkyard.
The moving van.
It had been moved.
<
br /> The mine? Bill thought. Is Marv trying to hide it there? Is that why Barks is . . .?
The shepherd stopped about halfway up the road. He sat down, craned around, and started licking himself. He looked up when Bill made a disgusted sound.
“Done yet?”
Barks stared at him for a second, leg slowly lowering. But then it kicked up again, and he kept licking his crotch.
Bill threw up his hands.
“Great.”
When he’d first seen Barks heading up the hill, away from the data center, he’d thought, finally, no more chasing geese around the valley; Barks would take him right to it.
Finally, Bill would have proof that he wasn’t crazy. Proof that this heartburn, which had been getting worse the last couple weeks, and even worse since Tuesday, wasn’t indigestion.
Something wasn’t right. Hadn’t been for a while now. And it wasn’t just this case. The sheriff, the deputies, Rat, and Marv; Clive and Mrs. Hayworth—even Aaron seemed different somehow, not as chatty. Steve, he was always Steve. But Steve’s kids?
The whole town seemed to have shifted right underneath Bill’s feet, leaving everything slightly to the left of where it ought to be. He kept stumbling around, banging his shins on things. Now even Barksdale seemed to have changed.
Bill didn’t like it. He couldn’t handle the earth shattering under him, not again. And he knew it was going to. It was like Steve with his blood pressure: Bill could feel it, the mercury levels were rising.
With a crunch of gravel, Barksdale got up and kept walking. Bill glanced back down the mountain, trying to decide whether or not following the old police dog was worth it.
Damn it, he thought, and a few minutes later he and Barks arrived at the mouth of Empty Mine.
Broken Road ended here in a huge flat spot, littered with beer cans, food wrappers, and shotgun shells. Some logs sat around an old fire pit where kids had thrown a party. Bill could still make out pieces of the pallets they’d burned.
At the back of the flat spot, in a niche cut into the mountain, a small fir tree clung to the dirt and rock above the mouth of the mine, its roots exposed, part tendril, part claw, divining for water and life.
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