A Spider Sat Beside Her

by K E Lanning

  “The Garden looks different today.”

  “I decided to show you another side of it.”

  They meandered along the garden path, and Edward was less formal than their first meeting, pointing out different flowers and laughing at the antics of the rabbits.

  Finally, curiosity won out, and she asked, “So what’s up? Why did you want to go for a walk?”

  He took her arm, pivoting her around to face him. With a charming grin, he said, “I just wanted to take a walk with the prettiest girl in the stars.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He chuckled. “Seriously.”

  Lowry raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t flirting some kind of conflict of interest or something?”

  “Nah. I’m only a junior attorney anyway.”

  The artificial breeze of the Garden kicked in, and Lowry breathed in the scent of the flowers carried on the gentle wind. But the playful wind mussed Edward’s hair, and his grin withered. He turned his head, smoothing it back into place.

  Puzzled at his change in demeanor, Lowry studied his profile. Her smile faded as she noticed the taut cords of his neck. Edward perfected his appearance and then turned back to her, flashing his signature grin, but he remained silent.

  Lowry tilted her head. “Are you okay? You seem stressed.”

  He blinked, but his eyes didn’t meet hers. “I’m fine.” Shrugging, he continued. “Well, maybe a little stressed—it’s hardly begun, and already this trial is exhausting.” With a faint sigh, he gazed vacantly out into the orchards nearby.

  A troop of chickens marched by, filling the awkward silence between them with their clucking and scratching. After they had passed, Lowry fumbled for something to say, asking, “What’s happening with the investigation?”

  With a grimace, Edward shook his head. “Frankly, I don’t want to discuss it.” He closed his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’d like to forget about the ISS case for a bit. I’ve been living it for weeks now.”

  Lowry smiled and placed her hand on his arm. “No problem, Edward, I understand.”

  A rustling noise came from the row of blueberry bushes lining the path. Edward and Lowry jerked around, staring at the trembling branches of one of the bushes until Adam pushed his way through the hedge. With a branch sticking in his disheveled hair, he guided a hovercart, filled with garden tools, onto the path. He paused for a moment to adjust his glasses, which had slipped down his nose, back into place, and then he began to steer the hovercart along the path toward them.

  Edward stepped backward, muttering, “What the hell?” under his breath.

  Lowry whispered back, “Oh, he’s the gardener. I don’t know his real name, but everyone calls him Adam. He’s a rather odd man who talks in fables and rhymes. He’s perfectly harmless.”

  Adam stopped and grabbed a rake. With his nose twitching, he came toward them, brandishing the rake in front of him like a medieval weapon. As if they were invisible, he stopped and calmly raked the leaves on the side of the path near their feet.

  “Hi, Adam—” Lowry began to say.

  Edward glanced sideways at her and then slipped his arm under hers, gently pulling her along the path away from Adam. “We’d better keep walking, Lowry.” When they were out of earshot, he said, “You didn’t tell me the ISS housed a funny farm.”

  Lowry shot him a sideways look. “Perhaps Adam’s a bit different, but he’s a very hard worker.”

  Edward pursed his lips. “I’m surprised they let a nut like that up here.”

  “They try to have representatives from around the globe.”

  “I guess he’s from Kookysvania?”

  “Mr. Comedian, don’t quit your day job—you ain’t that funny,” Lowry replied with a sneer. Then she shrugged. “I’ve asked Adam where he’s from, but he just grins and points to the overgrown berry patch.”

  “Ah, he’s Br’er Rabbit!” Edward chortled.

  A rabble of butterflies crossed in front of them, and they paused for a moment, admiring the iridescent pageant. Lowry gestured toward the passing swarm. “And that, my friend, is why a swarm of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope.”

  They walked along the trail and came to a stream. Edward held her hand as they stepped from rock to rock to the other bank. Once they reached the other side, Edward paused, still holding her hand. With a smile, he slowly turned back to gaze at the gurgling brook. “How lovely.”

  “And just think that only a few hours ago, that was servicing someone’s bathroom.”

  Narrowing his eyes, he looked at her. “Thanks for bursting my happy thoughts.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He gave her hand a little squeeze. “I wasn’t just referring to the stream.”

  With a raised eyebrow, she sneered, “You’re a big tease, Edward,” and then turned away to hide her smile.

  They walked toward the freshwater lake, and from time to time, Edward placed his hand gently on Lowry’s back. With each touch, she drew in her breath.

  When they reached the shore, they sat down on a bench, quietly watching the swans sail across the surface.

  Edward cleared his throat, and Lowry turned toward him. He exhaled and tilted his head toward her. “Lowry, there is another reason I needed to talk to you. I know you’re not going to like this, but you might be called as a witness in the trial.”

  Her mouth dropped open, and she turned to him sharply. “What? I thought my deposition was going to be enough.”

  Edward shrugged. “Your giving testimony during the trial is not in stone as yet. But the prosecution wants to have a preliminary meeting with you in case you go on the stand.” He gazed at her. “You are an important witness, my dear, as the only link between the ISS to the terrorist group allegedly involved in the attack. The prosecution team has arranged a meeting in conference room B, Section Two, to go over your possible testimony. You need to be there at ten o’clock sharp.”

  Lowry stared across the water at the pair of swans. They momentarily linked their necks together, only to break apart with a flurry of squawks, and the black swan chased the white one, disturbing the smooth surface of the lake with their wake. Was this new bombshell the reason Edward had been so cagey earlier? And his flirtation dance—was all of this some sort of push-pull tactic to keep her off balance?

  Edward touched her arm. “Don’t worry, Lowry. I’ll be there, too.”

  Lowry pursed her lips, squinting her eyes at him. “Yeah, but which side of the table will you be on?”

  ***

  The next morning, she walked down the hall to the meeting and paused at the conference-room door for a deep breath to settle her nerves before she entered the room.

  She slid inside the door, and Edward rose to greet her. Once he was facing away from the rest of the group, he gave her a sly wink. With a nod, he said in a formal voice, “Thank you for coming, Ms. Walker.”

  He motioned her to approach the table, gesturing toward a heavyset, middle-aged man sitting like a lord at a banquet. “May I introduce you to Mr. Gerwin, who is the Assistant District Attorney for the United States and is leading this investigation of the ISS attack?”

  Gerwin’s head was cocked to the side as he stroked his mustache with beads of sweat dotting his brow, ignoring Lowry while he read a document on his tablet. Lowry stood there awkwardly before he finally spoke, still not bothering to look up from his screen.

  “Ms. Walker, I believe?”

  “Yes.”

  Raising his head, he scrutinized her with a squint in his eye. “Ms. Walker, I have read over your deposition, and if I understand it correctly, you somehow received a strange laser file, supposedly by accident? Is this correct?”

  “Whether it was accidental or intentional, I suppose, is still in question. What happened is that we were moving over Antarctica in the midst of surface imagery data collection, when the file hit my computer—apparently beamed through the Landsat satellite dish.”

  “Ah, yes, I see.” Gerwin ran his sweaty hand
s across his mouth. “I believe you had said that you contacted your uncle, Nick Walker, just after the sabotage occurred?”

  Lowry nodded. “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me his occupation and why you felt he was the one to investigate this?”

  “He’s a geologist and came to work for the mining company on Antarctica years ago, before all of the ice had melted. He collects samples from outcrops to analyze the geologic history of the continent, so he knows the area.” With her palm toward him, she gestured with her hand. “You have to understand that the outpost on Antarctica has a very small staff, and he is also a volunteer for the fire and police department.”

  Gerwin stood up and leaned toward her, resting his hands on the table. The conference room became quiet as his eyes narrowed under furrowed brows. Lowry edged back in her chair away from Gerwin’s penetrating stare.

  His lip slowly curled up like an angry dog’s before it bites, and he snapped, “And would he have any reason to sabotage the space station?”

  Lowry stared at his twisted face and froze for a second in disbelief, astonished at the insinuation that her uncle might be involved. The absurdity of the question sunk in, and in her shock, she threw her head back and burst out laughing.

  Gerwin slammed his hand down on the table, the sound ricocheting around the room. Lowry bit her lip to stop laughing but helplessly snickered, holding onto the arms of her chair.

  “This is no laughing matter,” Gerwin snarled. “Someone tried to destroy this space station and nearly a hundred lives. We are going to get to the bottom of this!”

  Lowry stared at him. Her face flushed, and a switch within her clicked from hilarity to umbrage. Look asshole, it’s best not to wave a red cape at a newly divorced woman—gut-punching a lawyer would make my day.

  She stood up and bent toward him with her hands clenched in fury. “Just because you don’t know who did it, don’t hang Nick up as a scapegoat! He’s one of the finest men I know!” Lowry got into the groove of her rant, relishing the look on Gerwin’s pale face as he tilted away from her. “And aren’t you forgetting a critical element? How about motive? Why would Nick try to destroy the space station? His only niece is aboard, and there is no benefit to him if I lose my life.” With teeth bared, she thrust her index finger at him like a dagger. “You would be torn apart in about three seconds by the defense and destroy any remnant of credibility you may have. Is that what you want? Or do you want to try to figure out who really did this?”

  Lowry sat down, staring at Gerwin, who blinked in shock at the ferocity of her attack. I guess that will teach you not to poke me.

  Gerwin pursed his lips and sniffed. “All right. Well, I had to ask the question.” Then he sat down and ignored her, swiping a few pages on his tablet.

  The door to the conference room opened abruptly, and a young man stuck his head into the room but shrank back at the angry demeanor of the group.

  Gerwin growled, “What is it?”

  The young man held up his finger. “Uh, I was told to give you a message as soon as possible—I hope I’m not interrupting?”

  Gerwin impatiently waved him in. “Give it to me.”

  The young man crept toward the table and whispered in Gerwin’s ear. Gerwin nodded, dismissing him with a wave of his hand. He retreated from the room.

  Gerwin narrowed his eyes, stroking his short beard. “That will be all for now, Ms. Walker. But we need you back here at, say, nine tomorrow morning for a follow-up session.” He beckoned Edward with his finger and spoke in a low whisper to him.

  Lowry exhaled and stood up, still internally vibrating from the confrontation with Mr. Nice Guy. Clenching her jaw, she left the conference room and walked quickly down the hallway—at least it was over for now. She heard the door open, and Edward ran after her.

  When he caught up to her, he stopped and reached out to grab her arm. “I’m sorry about that, Lowry. He’s a real jerk.”

  Lowry grimaced. “No shit.”

  Edward chuckled. “But you gave it to him with both barrels.” He grabbed her around the waist. “I loved the way you dominated that son of a bitch!”

  She pushed his hand away. “Only an idiot would think Nick or myself had anything to do with this attack. It just doesn’t make sense—neither of us would have any motive to shut down the space station.”

  “Sense isn’t the name of the game—speed is. He’s under the gun to get this case solved.” He looked both ways down the hall and whispered, “We’ve just gotten word that we have a suspect in custody—an Inuit rebel leader from the Eskimo territories. Ever since the Melt, the Inuit tribes have been holding protests over the population invasion from the south into their territories. And with him in jail, we just don’t know what the tribe might do; they may retaliate.”

  Bewildered, she shook her head. “Eskimos? How strange—this is sort of déjà vu of the American Indian struggles of a past century, but I guess they are frustrated since from what I’ve heard, the United States tacitly ‘supports’ the invasion. But of course, knocking out power to a space station isn’t the way to do it.”

  “Isn’t it?” Edward said, raising his brows. “It would put them on the world stage.”

  “From the top of the world to the bottom would be a ways for them to travel to send a virus to the space station.”

  “Are you sure an OPALS message can’t be sent to the space station via the other satellite dishes on the station?”

  Lowry furrowed her brow. Tapping her chin, she replied, “They would have to know the angle and the location of them, which would be much more difficult than the broad data collection mode I was doing, which was aimed straight at the ground.”

  “They are the one group we know who has a motive.” He glanced back toward the conference room. Turning back to her, he brushed his lips against her ear. “Look, Lowry, I have to get back in there, but let’s meet later in the garden.”

  Her ear tingled with the touch of his warm lips. She nodded weakly.

  With an irresistible smile, he tugged on a strand of her hair. “Great, it’s a date. Five o’clock in the little pocket garden where we first talked.”

  She watched him disappear through the door and then shook her head to clear her thoughts. Like a fly, her thoughts kept returning to the same scent—Edward.

  Lowry went back to her room and, once inside, gripped the arm of a chair as if to hold onto her heart. Edward was intelligent, charming, and good-looking . . . and totally aware of it.

  But he laughs at my jokes. She ran her fingers through her hair, hating to admit that she was attracted to him. Her ex-husband Frank had been such an ass that Edward’s smooth brand of sexuality was a breath of fresh air.

  Lowry shivered as her mind went back to her “marital bliss” in the States. In her abject embarrassment, if nothing else, she had kept Uncle Nick and her father only vaguely informed of her short but disastrous marriage to Frank.

  She had come of age in the small-town atmosphere of the mining station on Antarctica. Everyone knew everyone’s weaknesses. Nothing was hidden. She had only fleetingly dated a couple of boys, so she had been innocent in love until college. Lowry was intellectually strong but had sucked miserably in her first serious relationship.

  Frank. What an education that had been. They had met her freshman year; he was an upper classman, and she had just arrived from Antarctica—a wide-eyed, emotionally immature girl. Frank was good-looking, athletic, humorous and sweet for the most part, but a hidden vein of low self-esteem raised its head in a few outbursts of anger and jealousy. Through college, they dated but lived apart, with no pressure points to expose the depth of his rage. After he graduated, he asked her to marry him. Like many couples at graduation, marriage seemed to be the next step in life. But . . . she didn’t truly know him.

  She completed her geophysics degree, and they set a date for the wedding, but as the day approached, the angry scenes became frequent. Oh, everything will be all right; he’ll change after we get marrie
d—he’s just a little nervous. On her wedding night, reality hit her—this was all a mistake. She felt revulsion at his touch, and after they made love, she felt an emptiness inside. Listening to his breath rise and fall as he slept beside her, she wondered about annulment.

  It had gone downhill from there. She began the graduate program for geophysics, and they moved to a small apartment . . . and her hellhole for the next year.

  Gone was the tenderness and the fun side of Frank. All that was left was an extraordinary temper, which exploded at the slightest pretense. His initial approach had been mental abuse, but the day came, as they drove home in the car, when it turned physical. He hit her on the arm, and for several minutes, she couldn’t feel two of the fingers on her left hand. A large, dark bruise appeared, a warning sign of what might be ahead for her.

  Then, like a miracle, Frank was transferred overseas for several months, and a great weight lifted from her as his plane left the tarmac, like the end of a storm. As the days passed without him, she regained her former personality and realized that she had to get away from him.

  He wrote her letters swearing he had changed and wasn’t the same man she had married. It was almost if he sensed that she was mentally cutting the bonds. He asked her to come and visit, and though torn about what to do, she did go to him. Marriage meant enough to her to at least try to see if he had truly changed. And oddly enough, she was curious about her own feelings toward him.

  When she landed at the terminal, he came into view, smiling and waving. An electric shock went through her. She still hated and feared him. That night, as they lay in bed, he asked her if there was any hope.

  She had blurted out, “No.” Both were stunned by her words.

  After her admission, Lowry wrapped herself in a cold barrier to keep her emotions from spilling out, dazed from the emotional battles. Luckily, there were other people in the flat to provide protection from any physical blows.

  Lowry left the next day on an early morning flight. She remembered the surreal ride to the airport, the cab racing through the streets as the fog lifted in the sunlight, and her relief that she had finally told him that she intended to leave him.