The Phone Company
Page 23
Barksdale walked right into the mine.
“Barks!” Bill said.
The click of the dog’s nails faded down the stone throat as he disappeared into the dark. Bill pulled out his flashlight and peeked into the dank mouth of the mine—only to spotlight a man’s face grinning back.
CHAPTER 21
Sarah was between periods. She had always felt this way about the library, nestled deeply in great books. Now she sought a different escape.
She was in hiding behind the tall sides of the study carrel, behind the taller shelves. In her stomach pouch, her Tether became a kicking baby.
Sarah still ranked among the top five on NV Me, according to the scoreboard. She had become a hashtag, as well:
#BrotherKisser
The meme had gone viral.
She’d been tagged in hundreds of photos since breakfast, photos she never even knew existed. Apparently, Follow no longer allowed her to remove tags. It also automatically friended anyone who sent requests, and Sarah had received a few hundred in less than an hour. Not just people from her school, either. Complete strangers. People from Pennsylvania, people from New York. Lea from Croatia, and this soldier boy in Mali. With every new friend, NV Me buzzed, awarding Sarah more points.
Over the partition walls of the library, she could hear the crowd quieting down and thinning out in the hallways as everyone filtered into class. Sarah got up to leave, picking up her things.
Anastasia stood right behind her.
“Oh my God, you scared me.”
Anastasia didn’t respond. Her bloodshot eyes gleamed between red, puffy eyelids and tangles of blonde hair. Her earwig blinked through the rats.
“I know it was you,” Anastasia said when Sarah tried to step around.
“Would you move? I’ve got to get to class.”
“Look!” Anastasia said, thrusting her Tether in Sarah’s face. “I said look!”
Onscreen, Anastasia’s name ranked well below the tenth most popular girl. “I know it was you. You’re the only one with the full app. I know you can downvote.”
Sarah shook her head, partly to hide her trembling.
“ ‘Hey, Anastasia, ur such a dirty skank, why don’t u go drink bleach?’ ”
Sarah frowned. “What’s—”
Anastasia continued reading something off her Tether. “ ‘Hey, hope u get shot in the face, it’d be an improvement.’ ”
“What is this?” Sarah asked. “I don’t—”
“ ‘Hope u get the same cancer as my mom, u might actually lose some weight.’ ”
Sarah flinched.
What was this, some sort of prank?
“Three hundred and thirty-two messages like this,” Anastasia said, showing Sarah the texts.
Indeed, Sarah’s name was on each and every message. All from this morning. All around the time Sarah was downvoting Anastasia.
“Erica Tracy,” Sarah said. It was the only thing that made sense. The only messages Sarah had sent out that morning had been to her brother. Maybe Erica had messed with her phone or hacked her account or something.
“I’m not stupid,” Anastasia said, “it has your na—”
“I let her use my phone, you idiot.”
Anastasia blinked.
Sarah did, too. She’d surprised herself. Finally, she had put Anastasia in her place. But it was tenuous, based on a lie. She hadn’t really let Erica use her phone. Sarah was surprised, too, when, in her hoodie, NV Me buzzed against her stomach. She had just earned points.
For what, the lie?
“Erica wanted to see how she could raise her rank,” Sarah said, talking faster as the seed of the idea broke open. “She actually said she wanted to know how you got ahead of her, so . . . I loaned her my phone.”
“She used your NV Me?” Anastasia asked.
Yes, Sarah thought, hiding her smile.
NV Me continued to vibrate.
Anastasia shook the glaze out of her eyes, shook some of the crazy out of her hair. “No. Erica’s my best friend.”
Sarah felt the knife slipping back on her, between her ribs. The pang was followed by a flare in her veins, and suddenly she was trembling for an entirely different reason. “I’m your best friend. Me.”
Anastasia shook her head. “It was your name. Erica wouldn’t do that.”
“Really?” Sarah said, closing the gap. She had always been bigger than Anastasia, and she’d used that in volleyball, back when she played. She’d knocked Anastasia on her ass once, just with an “accidental” shoulder bump. “Who defended you when your mom found your cigarettes?”
“What? You’re the one who got me c—”
“And who didn’t tell the cops? I mean, you just left me there! Besides, why would I even do that? Why would I offer to help you beat Erica only to turn right around and spit in your face?”
Anastasia was still shaking her head, but her eyes had gone glassy and had started to well up with tears.
NV Me buzzed again.
Yes, Sarah thought. “I can’t believe it,” she said, knowing she couldn’t stop. “You actually think I’m that stupid? You think I’d send you those texts from my own phone and then play dumb? I had no clue they’d been sent!”
“Bitch,” Anastasia said.
For a second, Sarah thought Anastasia was talking to her. But she wasn’t. Anastasia’s eyes ticked back and forth on the floor where she was putting it all together.
“Why don’t you go yell at her,” Sarah said, “instead of crapping all over your best friend?”
“That bitch.” With all the grace of a drunk, Anastasia turned and marched off.
Wait, Sarah thought.
If Erica got any chance to defend herself . . .
“Anastasia, wait!”
But not even the door into Mrs. Hunnicutt’s class could stop Anastasia Disney. She locked onto Erica Tracy and flew over the desks.
“You bitch!”
With a handful of hair, Anastasia pulled Erica into the aisle, where students were scattering from the flurry of papers, math books, and press-on nail claws.
“Stop!” Sarah screamed, watching from the door. “Stop!”
NV Me buzzed and buzzed.
* * *
“You startled me,” Bill said, stepping back to let the man out of the mine.
Graham, he thought. That was the guy’s name. Bill had assumed Graham was only a tour bus driver, until he saw him the other day at the church.
Graham didn’t emerge all the way into the light. He stood inside the mouth of the mine, dressed in a black suit and blacker shadows. The smell of seep water and decomposing stone emanated around him in a cold breath.
Bill couldn’t tell because of some roots dangling down, but the guy seemed to be holding something black against his ear. An old black handset.
“How can I help you, Officer?” Graham said, lowering his hand; apparently, he was just scratching his ear.
“Pardon me,” Bill said, “I don’t mean to alarm you, but—”
“Yes, I’ve already heard.”
“News travels fast, huh?”
“Well, I was the one who let the bomb squad in, so, yes, I travel fast.” Graham grinned, his teeth catching the light.
Bill didn’t know how that was possible. He’d walked this entire road, he and Barksdale. How could Graham have talked to the bomb squad way back at the data center only to beat them to the mine? With no visible car, I might add.
How was that even possible?
“I hate to tell you this, but my bomb-sniffing dog led me here. I’m going to have to ask what business you have in the mine.”
“Oh, of course,” Graham said, and a Tether lit up his face from below. “We bought the mine claim.” He let Bill study the digital copy, then lowered his phone. “I can give you the number of the agent if you—”
“No, that’s fine. So PCo’s mining, then?”
Graham flashed another grin. “Gold is essential in circuitry, as I’m sure you know.”<
br />
“Yeah, I used to pan for it.”
“It’s a great conductor.”
“Yeah, I’ve got Google too,” Bill said, zeroing in on Graham’s leer. You know what, screw this guy. Bill wasn’t some pissant deputy sheriff.
“Our other major interest in the mine is to route some of our cables from the tower,” Graham said. “Some of the crevices in this area serve as fantastic conduits.”
Bill shaded his eyes and looked up at the tower. “You got the easements and perm—”
“I could show you all that as well, yes. But some of it would be in older records.”
“Older—”
“I don’t have copies of those on my phone.”
“Oh.”
“They’re on file with the county, if you’d like me to take you down there.”
“Oh,” Bill said, this time without the sarcastic tint. What Graham was saying had started to make sense.
“Some of our lines have been here since the beginning.”
“Yeah, I guess I’ve seen some of those easements.”
“I know you have. You probably have one on your property.”
“I’ve actually helped settle a dispute,” Bill said.
“Yes, I think I remember hearing about that. I’ve been with the company forever.”
It had been forever ago, Bill thought. Twelve years at least. Marvin had threatened to drop a ton of junk on top of a company truck, back when PCo had attempted to erect a telephone pole on his back twenty.
Except back then, no one knew the company as PCo. They knew it as the shell name given to the local utility: Continental Connect. It was the same name on all those easements. Good old ConCon.
“We’ve always had the easements,” Graham said. “The county enforced eminent domain, in the interest of the public good.”
“Oh, of course,” Bill said, “I agree.” He agreed that, without the invention of the telephone, the world might have been a much different place. In some respects, a much more dangerous and lonely one.
He frowned into the darkness behind Graham.
Why, then?
Why had Barksdale led him here?
And why now?
Bill pulled out his own Tether. “Have you seen this man anywhere near your tower, or anywhere near any other PCo property you might own? Especially any of the easements?”
Graham looked at the picture of Marvin and shook his head. “I know Marvin Jones.”
“You do?”
“I told you I remembered. In fact, I was the one who approached Marvin about his family plots at Harcum. I assure you, he hasn’t been anywhere near this mine or our tower. Neither has Rat.”
Impressive, Bill thought. Already knows his enemies. “You got 24-hour security then, or . . .?”
“Eyes, Officer Biggs. Eyes everywhere, even in the backs of our heads.”
There it was again, that condescending tone, doubled with the cold, dank smell of the earth. Bill crossed his arms, crinkling a wrapper in his breast pocket. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
“Cameras,” Graham said, showing him something else on his phone. “They detect motion, we review the film.”
Bill whirled to look, and his image on Graham’s Tether whirled around, too. “I can’t even see the camera,” Bill said, studying a stand of trees. All he saw was an old crow’s nest.
“We know exactly who’s been up here,” Graham said. “That dog, for example?”
“Barksdale?”
“Yes. Steve’s dog.”
“So you know Steve?”
“I know Barksdale is no longer a police dog,” Graham said with a sharper grin. Always with the grin. Bill didn’t even know how to respond.
On his phone, Graham queued up a clip of security footage, filmed in night vision. “Barksdale—not his original name, of course—comes in here approximately every other day. He laps up some of the water back there by the natural spring, he sniffs around, he eats anything the kids might have left behind; chip crumbs, things like that.”
Barksdale stopped for a second. His head whipped back, ears cocked, eyes fixed right on the camera.
“And then he leaves,” Graham said, and Barksdale disappeared through a crack. “Slips out another crevice at the back.”
“Yeah? And what’s back there?”
“The other side of the mountain.”
“That all?”
“Yes.”
“Huh.” Bill cleared his throat. “Well then, I ought to take a look around anyway. In the interest of safety.”
Graham stepped forward, blocking the entire mouth. “I’m sorry, Officer Biggs, but no.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s more dangerous in here for you than it is for us.”
“That doesn’t exactly reassure me,” Bill said. “I’m going to have to ask you to step aside.”
Graham furrowed his brow and offered him a sideways smirk. “Deputy Biggs, have you been drinking?”
Bill didn’t let the change register on his face. “I’m on the job. What kind of question is that?”
“Yes, well, forgive me, but I fear you came up here under false pretenses. Do you even have a warrant?”
There was something about this guy, something Bill recognized but couldn’t define.
He had dealt with this kind of creep before. Usually they were in his interrogation room. Always so smug. So self-assured you wouldn’t catch them in their lies, so confident you couldn’t ever trick them. Bill wanted to reach across and strangle Graham.
“I’m here,” Bill said, “because I care about this town, and I don’t like what’s happening. But I plan on being there to stop it when something does.” I have to be, he thought.
“Yes,” Graham said, “it is a special place, isn’t it? That’s why we picked it.”
“Yeah, and why’s that?” When Graham didn’t immediately answer, Bill jumped back in. “’Cause it seems like you’ve stirred up more crap than it’s worth.”
“Yes, well, we picked it because, unlike most towns, Cracked Rock wasn’t established because of its timber, or its deposits. It wasn’t based on any crops or natural springs. No, this town was built solely around the loss of Harcum’s wife.” Graham’s head turned toward the road as he spoke.
Bill heard it, too.
A truck climbing the hill.
“It started as a graveyard, Officer Biggs, a cemetery town. And we thought, hey, where else do people have such a desperate need for communication, such a deep craving for connection, other than a community founded entirely upon grief?” Graham’s head turned again. “Ah, there are the men now.”
Bill walked out near the fire pit to get a better look down a bend in the road. He couldn’t see the truck yet, but it was getting close enough he could hear the crunch of gravel.
Some of that gravel crunched right behind him. He felt a waft of the dank underground and then Graham’s breath.
“Today, they’re installing the seal.”
Seal, Bill thought, wondering where he’d heard that before. Then he saw the company truck coming up the hill, pulling a huge stone disc on a flatbed behind it. A cement mixer followed, and Bill understood.
“Believe me, it’s too dangerous in there to look around right now anyway,” Graham said. “We don’t even have that many hardhats.” Folding his hands politely behind his back, he turned to Bill. “Anything else I can do for you, Deputy?”
Bill frowned back at Empty Mine. “Just, uh, don’t seal Barksdale in, all right? Pretty sure Steve would sue you.”
Graham patted Bill on the shoulder. “We’ll double check, but I assure you, Barksdale is already on the other side.”
For a few minutes, Bill stood and watched other people work, wondering why the hell they’d use a stone disc for a door. He watched as the construction guys erected a mold for the concrete, then he started back down the hill,
popping his second cough drop of the day. He might’ve burped if he thought it would help his nasty heartburn.
Back on the nature trail, Bill pulled out his Tether. Apparently, he’d left the lie detector running in the background. This time, he’d recorded Graham, the entire conversation—including the part where Bill had lied.
* * *
< . . . bee-lorp>
JJ and his dad met eyes in the rearview. Slowly, JJ lowered the phone, hiding it with his body, and for the entire ride home he walked Jaime Vedder around the battlefield of Cracked Rock, MT, scanning houses with The Wand.
CHAPTER 22
Bill sat in his driveway, poring over Graham’s test results. Aaron called. He pressed the button on his earwig and looked at the sunset. Up here, it had always reminded him of a painting of a valley, not a real view.
“You left before we could talk,” Aaron said.
“Oop, my bad.”
“I heard what happened. I’m so sorry.”
“Nah, not your fault.” Bill wasn’t surprised Aaron had heard. A stuffed antelope head had actually shifted on the office wall, Perkins had yelled at him so hard.
“You were just doing your job,” Aaron said.
“Yeah, which almost cost me my job.”
On mute, Bill let the polygraph skim through the conversation he’d had with Graham. The lines, even the ones for blood pressure and pulse, lay perfectly flat. Except when Bill talked. Whenever Bill talked, it was all cardiac distress. Judging by Graham’s portion of the graph, though, Bill had been talking with a dead man. Or a ghost, he thought.
“Hey,” Aaron said, “I was wondering. Are you going to Sherry’s tonight?”
Bill’s stomach flopped. “I don’t know. Steve was kind of bugging me to go.”
“Oh, well, if you guys just want to go . . .”
“Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know.”