Dead Calm

by Annelise Ryan

  “That’s a bit cavalier,” I say.

  “Sorry,” he says with a shrug, not looking sorry at all. “I didn’t know the woman. Was she a friend of yours?”

  I’m not sure how to answer this. My relationship with Alison Miller had been a mixed one. We knew each other in high school, though we weren’t close friends, and when I first met Hurley, she became something of an enemy for a couple of reasons. One was the fact that she was competing with me for Hurley’s attention and affections. The other was the fact that she photographed me several times in very unflattering, half-naked circumstances, and those pictures appeared in our local paper and, on one occasion, in a national rag much like the National Enquirer. She was also incredibly nosy and a bit of a pest when it came to our investigations.

  Over time, we sorted things out with her and hit upon a working relationship that was satisfying to all parties involved. And when her mother was diagnosed with ALS—forcing Alison to pass up on a cushy job offer in Chicago—I helped her care for the woman until she died.

  Alison’s death had hit me hard, and now she had been replaced by this pimply-faced, nerdy, Jimmy Olsen character. “Yes, she was a friend of mine,” I say.

  Cletus Barnes again apologizes, concluding with, “Sorry for your loss.” His obvious lack of sincerity is annoying, but he doesn’t offer me a chance to chastise him any further. He is gaping at the bones in the hole, close enough to the edge that he’s at risk of falling in.

  I suppress an urge to give him a shove. “Stand back, please,” I say.

  Cletus ignores me and starts shooting pictures. “That skull doesn’t look normal,” he observes. “It looks like an alien or something.” He turns and gives us a wide-eyed look. “Is it an alien?”

  “No,” I say.

  “Could be,” Arnie says at the same time, and I roll my eyes as I hear Hurley cuss under his breath.

  Cletus looks back down at the bones and snaps a few more pictures. Finally, Hurley grabs him by the arm and pulls him away from the edge. “Back off,” Hurley grumbles. “This is a potential crime scene.”

  Cletus allows himself to be pulled back, but he doesn’t go far. And I can tell he has no intention of leaving. He takes out his cell phone and makes a call. To my relief, he walks off a little way so he can talk. The fact that he’s whispering into the phone makes me suspect that rumors of an alien skeleton will soon be rampant. In fact, given that an edition of the paper comes out tomorrow, I’m betting it will be the headline.

  Time is ticking away, and even though we’re blessed with the late sunsets of summer, it will be dark sooner than we’d like. “We best get to it,” I say to Otto and Hurley.

  They both nod their agreement, and after moving the ladder a little closer to the bones, I position myself on it and make my way down to where I can easily reach the rib cage. With my brush, I try to remove some of the dirt around the skull, but it’s too wet and packed too hard for me to move much. I stick the brush back into my pocket and take out a small hand rake and a trowel. I spread my feet as far apart as I can on the step I’m on and stick my left arm between two rungs, wrapping it around the side of the ladder. Holding the small rake in my right hand, I start clawing away as gently as I can at the surrounding soil. Above me, Hurley is making a videotape of the scene and my efforts.

  About ten minutes in, I have exposed a neck bone and part of what appears to be a shoulder. So far, these look quite ordinary and human. Fifteen more minutes and I’ve exposed all of one arm, and I’m working on what appears to be the hand. This is where normalcy stops. There are only three fingers: a thumb-type of appendage, and two other digits that are easily the width of two or three normal fingers. The bones don’t look like anything I’ve ever seen before.

  “What the hell?” Otto says when he sees it. This draws the attention of Cletus, who takes advantage of everyone’s distracted state to once again encroach on the edge of the hole. I hear the subtle click, click, click of his camera.

  Arnie, who has been standing by and pacing, stares at the bones for a second before saying, “See? I told you it was an alien.” He pauses, cocks his head to one side, and looks up at the sky. “And here they come,” he says in an ominous tone.

  That’s when I hear the soft whump, whump, whump of an approaching helicopter.

  CHAPTER 14

  Just as the helicopter comes into view, another van comes up the drive and pulls to a stop. It’s a TV van from one of the stations in Madison. I shoot Cletus a dirty look, convinced he’s the reason the TV people have shown up. As the helicopter draws closer, we can see that it, too, is from a TV station, not the feared—or in Arnie’s case, revered—men in black.

  Hurley mutters another curse under his breath. The helicopter closes in and hovers above our dig site, hanging there and sending down a whirligig of wind that forces me to stop what I’m doing and hang on to the ladder for dear life. Hurley and Otto both try to wave the copter off, but if the pilot sees either of the men, he’s ignoring them. From the TV van, two men emerge, one carrying a camera, the other a box of some sort.

  “Hi, there,” shouts the man carrying the box. Even with his loud tone, it’s hard to hear him over the loud whump, whump of the helicopter blades above us. “I’m Adam Wagner from the Madison FOX TV affiliate. I heard a rumor that you found an alien skeleton out here.”

  Hurley stops the man’s progress by stepping into his path and putting his hands on his hips with his elbows out to the sides—the human equivalent of the frilled-neck lizard. “Hold it right there,” he says loudly. “This is a crime scene, and as such, I can’t allow anyone else to be here.”

  Adam frowns at this, but it’s a calculating frown that tells me he isn’t going to give up easily. “Really?” he hollers back. “What crime?”

  “Until we finish unearthing these bones and get them examined, I can’t tell you,” Hurley yells.

  “So, it’s not technically known for sure that it’s a crime scene?” Adam says. He doesn’t wait for an answer. “And I’ve heard that the bones you found aren’t normal ones, that they might be from a space alien?”

  “They’re not from a space alien,” Hurley says through gritted teeth. This softens his voice to the point that Adam can’t hear him.

  “What’s that?” Adam asks, cupping a hand behind one ear.

  Hurley repeats what he said, louder this time. And sharper. I can tell his patience is wearing thin.

  “Oh, so you have been able to examine them, then, to rule that out?” Adam yells back with a grin that is a perfect mix of smugness and innocence. None of us is fooled as to which emotion is the true one.

  Hurley’s face becomes a thundercloud. His head rolls back on his shoulders, and he glares at the helicopter overhead, which now has someone hanging out a side door, aiming a camera down at our hole. For a moment, I wonder if Hurley is going to take his gun out and shoot the damned thing.

  “If there is even a small possibility that those bones aren’t human,” Adam goes on, “the public has the right to know, before the government steps in and tries to cover it up.”

  Arnie nods vigorously at this comment, and I suspect he’s just made a new friend.

  Hurley lowers his head and glares at Adam. “If you don’t turn around right now and head back to your vehicle, I’m going to arrest you.”

  “Arrest me?” Adam scoffs. “For what?”

  “For trespassing, to start with,” Hurley says.

  Adam weighs this threat for a few seconds, and then says, “I’ll get permission from whoever owns this land.” He takes out his cell phone, presumably to search for who it is who owns the property. I can’t help but smile.

  “I own this land,” Hurley says in a loud, menacing voice. He takes his gun from its holster. “And you, sir, are trespassing. I tend to shoot first and ask questions later.”

  Adam pales at this, and his cameraman shifts nervously, waiting to see what’s going to happen next.

  The helicopter, its occupants apparent
ly satisfied with whatever footage they got, suddenly takes off, giving us some relief from the noise and the downdraft. I look over at Hurley, point toward the retreating copter, and say, “Whoever that was got pictures, and you can bet this is going to be on the news tonight and in the morning. So why not let these guys get a picture or two as well?”

  “Because it’s going to feed into the fantasies of the crazies out there who believe in this space alien crap, and they’re going to be swarming all over our land before you can say ET.”

  I see Arnie shoot Hurley a wounded look.

  “So we post a couple of guys to keep people away,” I say. “It’s a done deal, Hurley. You’re fighting a battle that’s already been lost, thanks to that helicopter. Besides, maybe someone out there will know something about these bones. It could help us identify the body.”

  Hurley considers this and seems to realize I have a point. He holsters his weapon, and with a perturbed but resigned shake of his head, he waves Adam and his cameraman over toward the edge of the hole and the ladder I’m standing on.

  “Thanks, man,” Adam says, hurrying over before Hurley has a chance to change his mind. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to give us a sound bite, answer a question or two on camera?”

  “You are really pushing your luck,” I tell him in a low, warning tone, thinking Hurley is already mad enough to push Adam into the hole.

  Adam waves his cameraman over and points toward the bones. As the guy starts filming, Adam looks around at all of us and says, “Who are you people?”

  Otto, who has stood by quietly, looking more amused than annoyed, does the introductions. I go back to doing what I was doing before all the interruptions. When Adam has been adequately informed, he shifts his attention back to the bones, staring at them.

  “So if that’s not an alien body, what the heck is it?” he asks, staring.

  “Most likely the body of someone with some serious birth defects,” Otto answers.

  Adam contemplates this answer, still staring at the bones. After a moment or two he says, “You know, my aunt claims that she was abducted by aliens four years ago. She drew a picture of the creatures, and I have to tell you, it looked exactly like those bones you have there. We all assumed she was crazy at first, but there were some things that were hard to explain.”

  Arnie jumps on this. “Like what? What was her story?”

  Adam pulls at his chin. His photographer, whose name we learned during the earlier introductions is Hans Larkin, stops filming the bones and lowers the camera.

  Adam begins his story, and as he speaks, he has the rapt attention of everyone there. “She said she was watching TV, and it was late at night, around midnight, she thought. She and my Uncle Lou lived up on Madeline Island at the time. It’s one of the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior near Bayfield. Anyway, the island population is small, and as you might guess, it’s a relatively secluded place, particularly in the late fall, which is when this happened. Aunt Gertrude said Lou had gone to bed already, and she was sitting in a recliner watching TV when all of a sudden, all the lights in the house went out. At first, she didn’t think anything of it because it was windy outside, and the electricity on the island is always going out. She got out of the chair, intending to head up to bed, when a bright light suddenly came in through the window. Several windows, actually. She said it was like someone had turned their yard into a football field with all those klieg lights they use at night.”

  I glance over at Arnie and see that he is spellbound by Adam’s story.

  “Curious,” Adam continues, “she walked over toward the front door and window, and looked outside. The light was so bright, it was blinding. She tried to shield her eyes some and look again, but all she could see was bright white light that seemed to be coming from above. The whole thing spooked her, so she turned around to head for the kitchen, thinking she should at least arm herself with a knife or something. They owned a shotgun, but it was upstairs, and she didn’t want to turn her back on the lower level to go up and get it.”

  Adam pauses and looks around at his audience. All eyes and ears are focused on him and his story. “She says she remembers thinking about getting the knife and heading for the kitchen, but she has no memory of actually reaching the kitchen or getting any sort of weapon. In fact, the next thing she remembers is waking up in the living room the next morning.”

  Hurley rolls his eyes. “Easy enough to explain. She fell asleep in the recliner and had a dream. A very vivid dream, I’ll grant you, but still.”

  “Yeah,” Adam agrees, “we all came up with the same explanation. Except she didn’t wake up in the recliner. She was on the couch.”

  “So she walked in her sleep during her dream,” Hurley says dismissively.

  “Maybe,” Adam says. “But that doesn’t explain the other stuff.”

  “What other stuff?” Arnie asks, his eyes wide, his expression eager. He looks like a dog waiting for its owner to throw a ball.

  “When she woke up, she felt groggy, like she’d been drugged or something. And she swore she didn’t take anything. She had some vague memories of small, short creatures touching her and looking at her. She drew pictures of them. They had big heads and big eyes, but the eyes were close-set. The lower part of the face was small and narrow, and the hands were like claws, she said. With two fingers and a thumb.” He pauses and casts a pointed look down toward the bones.

  “Still all explainable as a dream,” Hurley says.

  “But I’m not done yet,” Adam says with an arch of one brow. “Outside in the front yard, about where she said the bright light seemed to have been brightest, there was a large, circular burn mark in the grass. She and Uncle Lou swear it wasn’t there the night before. And when she continued to feel off throughout the day, she went to her doctor for an exam. And her doctor found this weird piece of metal embedded in her back, just below her shoulder blade. There was a tiny, healed scar around it, and when Aunt Gertie insisted that the doc remove it, he did. He said he had no idea what it was. It was a small, perfectly round piece of some strange blue metal, with a grid pattern on one side. The doctor sent it off to a lab to be analyzed, but it never got there. It simply disappeared. No one has seen it since, and no one was able to trace what happened to it.”

  “Convenient,” Hurley mutters.

  Arnie gives him an impatient look. “Bury your head in the sand if you want,” he says. “But all the denial in the world doesn’t change the fact that they’re here. They’ve been here for centuries, and they’re still here.”

  Hurley rolls his eyes in disgust and takes out his cell phone. “I’m going to check on some things,” he says. And with that, he walks off toward the parked vehicles, leaving the rest of us behind.

  I’ve now managed to unearth the entire skeleton, along with several small pieces of something that looks like cloth. Most of these are tiny and rotted to the point that they disintegrate if I even touch them, but there is one intact piece that is about the size of a quarter, its edges frayed and caked with mud and dirt. It’s folded in half, and I have Otto shoot some footage of it—Hurley has handed off the filming duties—before I gently separate the layers. In the fold, I can see a gold-colored surface.

  “That’s odd-looking,” Otto says.

  “It looks metallic,” Arnie says. “Like a uniform of some kind,” He looks like a kid who has just been set loose in a candy store with a twenty-dollar bill.

  Cameras start snapping away, and a few minutes later, all of the newsy people are gone, dashing back to their offices to report on the find.

  Over the next half hour, the last of the construction workers leave, too, so that the only people left are me, Hurley, Otto, and Arnie. Arnie has been busy tapping away on his smartphone, no doubt contacting whatever group of alien-embracing conspiracy theorists he hangs out with online.

  “I think we can expect a lot of extra company on this case,” I say to no one in particular. “Once this hits the news, people will be flocki
ng here.”

  “There won’t be anything here for them to see once we get the body out,” Otto observes.

  “Assuming it’s the only one,” Arnie says, eyebrows raised. This thought makes all of us exchange pained looks of realization.

  “Damn,” Otto says, massaging his temples. “He’s right. We need to excavate this area more thoroughly. There could be other bodies buried nearby.”

  “Or parts of a spaceship,” Arnie says.

  This makes Hurley groan.

  But Arnie is not deterred. “Come on,” he says. “We find a malformed body and bits of some sort of metallic cloth. Tell me you aren’t considering the possibility that this might be something otherworldly.”

  In unison, Otto, Hurley, and I say, “We’re not.”

  Arnie shakes his head in disappointment. “You people are in denial. And you have no imaginations. You need to open your minds to other possibilities.”

  At the moment, the only other possibility I can focus on is how tired and dirty I am, and how much longer this work is going to last. “Arnie,” I say, feeling annoyed, “since you’re so intrigued by this site and what we’ve found here, the least you can do is get down here in the dirt and help.”

  If I expect this to daunt him in any way, I’m disappointed. Arnie rubs his hands together gleefully.

  “Happy to help,” he says. And then he grabs a nearby shovel left by the construction crew and starts digging in to the edges of the hole near our find.

  I’m glad he’s willing to help, but even if all of us start digging in—literally—I know we’re likely in for an all-nighter.

  CHAPTER 15

  My human alarm, otherwise known as my son, Matthew, wakes me just after six thirty the next morning. I’m not as happy to see him as I should be, primarily because I didn’t get to bed until well after two. I called Dom around suppertime to explain that we might be late picking up Matthew, and Dom kindly offered to keep him all night. I was tempted to take him up on the offer, but Hurley called Bob Richmond and had him and a couple of off-duty officers come out to the site to help. Then Hurley went to pick Matthew up somewhere around seven.