by Joan Hess
Ruby Bee was fanning herself so vigorously her hair was standing on end. Estelle wasn’t doing much better; she tried to take a swallow of sherry, but most of it dribbled down her chin as she stared at Jules.
Smelling their fear, he went in for the kill. “I’ve suspected this for a long time, but I found proof when I took the job at the Weekly Examiner. My editor receives a certain sum of money from the Pentagon for every story about a saucer or a close encounter. Do you remember the stories during the campaign about a goofy alien that was photographed with the major candidates? I got a thousand-dollar bonus for each of them. The one about the President’s wife adopting an alien infant was worth twice that.”
“Oh, my gawd,” said Ruby Bee, who remembered every word of the story because there had been an actual artist’s depiction of the alien baby, and it reminded her of her second cousin’s son (who’d been expelled from grade school three times and dropped out all together when he was nine).
Estelle managed to swallow some sherry this time. “Why don’t you write a story and expose the conspiracy? You could give it to one of the real newspapers or even a television show.”
“I need hard evidence,” he said. “What’s so frustrating is I know where to get it, but not how. Sageman keeps everything on computer disks, from dates and numbers to the reports the Majestic Twelve commission submits to the President, and he never goes anywhere without them. If I could get my hands on those disks for even a few hours, I’d take the information to every legitimate news source in the country and force the government to tell us what’s going on—before it’s too late.”
Ruby Bee was having a hard time catching her breath as she tried to sort out what he’d said. It was one thing to listen to Dr. Sageman and Dr. McMasterson bickering about whether the aliens were coming down from the sky or up from the ocean. Dahlia’s declaration in the back booth—well, it’d made for some interesting discussion afterward. Even what she’d seen with her own two eyes didn’t make any sense. But the man sitting right across from her had proof that UFOs existed and the aliens had made contact.
“Too late?” gasped Estelle.
“Too late to save our civilization,” Jules said dolefully. “What if they’ve come to enslave us? They have a superior intellect and the technology to travel faster than the speed of light. They haven’t come here to learn from us; they’ve come for their own dark purposes.” He put aside the menu and stood up, his face scrunched up with pain and his eyes glittery with tears. “I’ve lost my appetite. Maybe I’ll take a drive and enjoy my freedom while I can. It won’t be long before … we may not be able to do that anymore.” He trudged heavily toward the door, encumbered by the incipient shackles of slavery.
Ruby Bee’s knees were so wobbly she had to grab the edge of the bar to steady herself. “Wait, Mr. Channel. Maybe I can help you.”
He hesitated, then turned around. “I don’t see what you can do, Ruby Bee. Unless I have access to Sageman’s computer files, we’re doomed. It’s just as well I never had any children; the thought of them toiling in underground mines on a planet light-years away, bred like cattle, living lives of quiet desperation”—his voice cracked—“it’s too horrible to bear.”
“You said Dr. Sageman travels with all his computer files. I straightened up his room earlier today. He’d moved the furniture around to use the table as a desk. It’s a real mess, but next to the computer I noticed a pile of flat plastic squares.” She formed a rough shape with her thumbs and forefingers to demonstrate the size. “Would those be what you’re talking about?”
“They might be,” Jules said as he came back to the bar and reached over it to squeeze her shoulder.
Estelle felt obliged to contribute to the salvation of the planet. “I looked more carefully while Ruby Bee made the beds and cleaned the bathroom. There was a thick pile of that paper with holes along the margins. I didn’t have time to do more than glance at it, but what I read had to do with the size and arrangement of crop circles in Raz’s field.”
“Were there labels on the disks?” Jules asked, staring at her.
Now that she had his full attention, Estelle took her time recalling the scene. “Most of them had stickers with dates or names written on them. I didn’t find one that said Maggody, but it may have been in the computer.”
One of the women in the first booth was looking at them as if she could hear every word. Ruby Bee went over to the jukebox, dropped in a quarter, and punched the handiest button. An adenoidal wail filled the room as she came back and said, “I reckon I could let you in Dr. Sageman’s room. I’ll have to go with you, of course, since it’s my motel and I have an obligation to my guests—even if they’re government agents. One of these days Arly might get around to having babies, and I don’t aim to see my grandchildren end up as slaves.” She realized Estelle was glowering hard enough to melt wax candles. “You can be the lookout,” she said to her in a spurt of generosity.
“When?” demanded Jules.
“I don’t know,” she said. “We’ll have to think of a way to make sure he’s out of his room long enough for you to make copies or whatever you need to do.”
The three settled down to discuss their strategy as someone in Nashville bemoaned the loss of his truck, his dawg, his job, and his woman (in that order).
ELEVEN
I made sure my badge was nice and shiny before I knocked on Hizzoner’s front door. I was hoping to have a private conversation with him, but Mizzoner opened the door and regarded me with what can only be described as ill-concealed panic.
“What?” she shrieked, shrinking into the hallway as if I were accompanied by a gang of glassy-eyed children from The Village of the Damned.
It was not the warmest reception I’d ever had, but rather than worry about it, I said, “I’m sorry if I’m interrupting your dinner, but I need to speak to Jim Bob.”
Her mouth tightened until her lips were invisible. After a quick glance over her shoulder she came out onto the porch and closed the door behind her. “You don’t have any call to speak to him. He’s been working hard all week and deserves to rest on the seventh day, just like the Bible says. If you’d attend church more often, you’d be familiar with the notion.”
“If I had a deputy, I might be able to take the day off myself. Now that I think about it, there’s nothing I’d rather do more than sit in a pew at the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall and listen to one of Brother Verber’s inspirational sermons. I just know I’d come out with a hymn on my lips and a halo over my head. Maybe I could even come over here after church to have friend children with y’all. Why don’t you put in a good word with Jim Bob about increasing the budget so I can afford some of that old-time religion?”
“I will not tolerate sacrilege on the Sabbath,” she said, her posture as rigid as a majorette’s. If she’d had a baton, she probably would have bopped me on the head, but as it was, she muttered something about mending my ways, shook a finger at me, and started for the door.
I cut her off. “I really do need to speak to Jim Bob for a minute. Is he here?”
“Jim Bob has nothing to do with this.”
“Yes, he does,” I said, wondering how much she knew about the origin of the note. I’d never thought of their marriage as a close relationship replete with cozy conversations beneath the blankets; they were more likely to have bedrooms at opposite ends of the house, if not opposite corners of the county. “He may not be the one who came up with the scheme, but at some point he became involved.”
“You know perfectly well who’s behind this. Jim Bob may have unwittingly allowed himself to be used, but anything he did was out of charity, not out of greed.”
The conversation was getting so weird I had to resist the urge to step back and check the sky for hovering craft. “Jim Bob did something out of charity?”
“One of the commandments is to love thy neighbor as thyself, Miss Chief of Police. All Jim Bob did was come to the aid of a neighbor who needed a helping hand.
”
“Who is this neighbor?”
“Are you playing games with me?”
If I was, I wished someone would slip me a copy of the rules. And a scorecard, for that matter. “I’m in the middle of an investigation,” I said, “and I need to speak to Jim Bob.”
“As soon as he finishes his dinner, he’s going down to the SuperSaver, but I don’t want you to pester him while he’s there either. Shouldn’t you be worried about this poor boy’s death last night? Murder’s a sight more important than whatever little transgressions Jim Bob may have committed.”
I opened my mouth to explain the purpose of my visit, decided against it, and gave her a meek smile. “Guess that’s what I’ll do.”
Temporarily thwarted, I drove back to the main road, sat at the intersection, and watched the stoplight change a couple of times while I contemplated my next move. I finally drove out County 102, parked behind Rosemary’s car on the now well-trampled shoulder, and walked to the clearing to find out how good my memory was.
It proved to be adequate. Brian had not fallen and hit his head against a rock, unless he’d done so on the gravel bar twenty feet away. If he’d staggered into a tree, the coroner would have found bits of bark in the wound. The weeds were thick enough to cushion a fall.
The true believers no doubt would claim that Brian had been clipped on the back of his head by an appendage on a craft—or attacked by a lurching silver alien. They would also claim that the burn marks were evidence that the craft had utilized some sort of fiery propulsion system—with carbon monoxide as the by-product.
And if the perpetrators were to be brought to justice, I’d have to serve arrest warrants in the region of Canis Major. We’d have attorneys from Andromeda and a prosecutor from Pegasus. We could round up jurors from the cast of Star Wars.
I walked back to the road and along the shoulder to the illegal garbage dump. The only thing that might be classified as a blunt object was a cracked toilet seat, but it was covered with a layer of dust. The pieces of lumber were too long to be swung with ease. Bouncing a tire off someone’s head wasn’t likely to do much damage.
It was time to get busy finding out when, how, and why Brian had left the gravel bar across from Raz’s field. There were only 755 locals and a couple of dozen visitors (of the terrestrial variety anyway). Unless Brian had been joyriding in a UFO, surely someone had seen him between seven and eleven the previous night.
I headed for the PD to see if Harve could be bullied into sending me a couple of deputies, preferably with hardy knuckles.
After Kevin had quit trying to talk to her through the door and left for work, Dahlia came out of the bathroom, detoured through the kitchen for a can of soda pop, and went out to the backyard. She couldn’t see Raz’s cabin through the brush, but she could hear car doors slamming and voices calling back and forth as more folks arrived to stare at the crop circles. It was a nice enough day, as sunny and warm as a body could hope for in early spring, but she shivered as she searched the sky for a flash of silver that would warn her they were coming for her—again.
Dr. Sageman promised her that she’d remember what she said during the session, and as she stood in the yard, hands on her hips, eyes seeping tears, she did. He’d been real careful not to hurry her along but instead had spoken in a honeyed voice and even patted her on the arm when she got to shaking when the images got so horrifying she couldn’t hardly bear ’em.
And the ordeal wasn’t over, not by a long shot. She had proof that they’d come for her before, and they’d come back when it was time to retrieve the monster growing inside her. As if on cue, it growled like a fierce wild animal, and she would have fainted dead away if she hadn’t realized at the last moment that it was her stomach instead of her womb making its desires known.
There was no way to escape them either. With some coaxing from Dr. Sageman, she’d remembered the tiny metal pellet they’d inserted way up in her nose so they could keep track of her whereabouts. She pinched the bridge of her nose, wishing she could sneeze hard enough to make the pellet come shooting out. But Rosemary had suffered with one, too, and she’d said there was no way short of surgery to get rid of the pesky pellet. All you could do was wait until they were done with you.
There was no place to run, no place to hide.
Wheezing bleakly, Dahlia trudged back inside and went to the kitchen to fix herself some lunch. Kevin wouldn’t be back till late, so there wasn’t much reason to stay in the bathroom all afternoon and evening. But as soon as his headlights turned into the driveway, she figured she’d have to retreat. Refusing to talk to him was causing him pain, but the truth would squash him like an armadillo on the interstate. She couldn’t do that.
A deputy showed up toward the middle of the afternoon. We arbitrarily divided the town, and he headed for the Pot o’ Gold Mobile Home Park and the little subdivision with what the builder called cul-de-sacs and everybody else called dead ends. I worked my way up the hill toward Kevin and Dahlia’s house, although I didn’t bother with them or with Raz, who was waving his arms and arguing with several gray-haired visitors who must have demanded a senior citizen discount.
No one admitted having seen Brian Quint at either side or in transit. However, every last soul with whom I spoke had heard all about the mysterious death. The hyperbole had reached such epic proportions that husbands were keeping loaded guns by the front door and wives were sharpening butcher knives. In broad daylight, mind you. When it started getting dark, missionaries and door-to-door salesmen were going to discover they were endangered species.
I stopped by the supermarket to see if I could corner Jim Bob. A checker directed me to the office, where I found my potential witness on the telephone. I sat and waited until he banged down the receiver, scribbled a note, and then turned around to glower at me.
“I said I wanted a report first thing this afternoon,” he said, his belly inflating and his eyes bulging as if he were a bullfrog. “Maybe you’ve forgotten that you’re employed by the town council, Chief Hanks, but we sure as hell haven’t. When’s your contract up?”
I unpinned my badge and tossed it at him. “It’s all yours—lock, stock, and flying saucer.”
“Save the hysterics for when you get a run in your panty hose,” he said sourly. “Tell me what all you found out about the boy that died last night. Then you can get back to investigating and I can run my store—okay?”
I toyed with the idea of stomping out of the room, but I wasn’t sure how far I’d get with less than a hundred dollars in my savings account. “If you want an official report, call an official meeting of the town council. In the meantime, I need to know about the note you gave Kevin yesterday afternoon.”
“I don’t write notes to the stock boys.”
I pulled out the faked note and dropped it on his desk. “The X on the map is where I found the body last night,” I said, watching for his reaction.
He picked it up and read it under his breath. “You think I wrote this? I didn’t see any silver disk crash anywhere, and if I had, why would I write this pissant note and give it to Kevin? I’d be more likely to alert those reporters from the tabloids and call the television station in Faberville, wouldn’t I?”
“It was in an envelope with Reggie Pellitory’s name on it. Where’d you get it?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, nodding. “It was stuck under the door when I unlocked the store yesterday morning. I meant to give it to Reggie myself and remind him this ain’t a damn post office, but I got busy. When Kevin came here to say he’d finished mopping, I gave him the note and told him to find Reggie.” Even though he was a Buchanon, he realized the significance of the note and gave me a puzzled look. “Did Reggie show this to the Quint fellow? Is that why he went to the low-water bridge?”
“Reggie was supposed to deliver it to Dr. Sageman,” I said evasively. “I’m still—”
“Yeah, I talked to Sageman the other afternoon, and he said he’s going to give a real important lecture
about the circles and all this crazy shit at some conference and maybe even write a book about ’em. Those tabloid reporters are eating it up, too. Next week when their stories come out, we’re going to be flooded with tourists.” He picked up my badge and tossed it back at me. “Make sure your radar gun’s working, Chief Hanks; you might hand out enough traffic tickets to justify the salary we pay you.”
“It won’t take many,” I said, then went back outside, no more enlightened than I’d been. Despite Mrs. Jim Bob’s odd remarks, Jim Bob didn’t seem to know much about the note. Concluding that she must have been referring to one of his innumerable torrid affairs with women in double-wide trailers, I repinned my badge on my shirt and drove over to Elsie McMay’s house to ask her if she’d seen Brian Quint the previous night.
Estelle came into the barroom and took her customary stool. “Dr. Sageman’s still in his room,” she reported. “I peeked through the window and saw him lying on the bed. I could hear Dahlia’s voice, so he must be playing the tape from her session. I’d sure like to hear what all she had to say about being kidnapped by aliens.”
Ruby Bee set down a glass of sherry. “You’d think that if the aliens were so all-fired intelligent, they’d have picked someone easier to beam up. If they’re really making women pregnant with their babies, like Rosemary says, it seems to me they should have ruled out anyone with a drop of Buchanon blood. Her grandfather was a double cousin Buchanon on his mother’s side. He lit so many fires that his wife had to follow him around day and night with a fire extinguisher.”
“This ain’t the time to worry about family trees,” Estelle said. “We promised Jules we’d figure out a way to get Dr. Sageman out of his room. Short of starting a fire ourselves, I can’t think of anything. He looked real comfortable and liable to stay there the rest of the afternoon, particularly since he doesn’t have a car. He’s not the sort that’d hitchhike—or get picked up if he tried.”