Alison had not even finished the chapter of Car when she heard the noise from the far end of the main library wing. It was a dull clunking noise, quiet but unmistakeable. Books were falling on the floor. Must be someone still here, she thought, putting her book away and rising from behind the front desk. When she reached the room the noise was louder, though still muffled by the thick carpeting on the floor. Then she heard a heavy clomping sound, as if a number of people were running up and down the aisles. Alison saw a couple of books fly over a shelf unit and she stopped immediately. Vandals?
She hurried back to the front desk and picked up the phone to buzz Mr Balinski, the janitor, in the basement. But even as she was dialling he came around the corner from the stairs.
‘Evening, miss,’ he said with a genial smile.
‘Mr Balinski,’ she said, ‘thank God you’re here.’
‘What is it?’
‘Someone is in there throwing books around.’
‘Oh are they?’ He strode into the main wing and Alison followed closely behind.
They found hundreds of books scattered about on the floor with pages tom out and bindings destroyed. The noise had stopped.
‘Oh my God,’ she exclaimed. ‘Look at all this.’
Mr Balinski had a quick look around and returned to the girl.
‘Nobody here now.’
*
‘It’s the mayor’s office on the line, Chief,’ the police department switchboard operator said.
‘Oh hell.’ Sturdevent exhaled loudly.
‘Want me to tell them you’re out?’
‘No, that’s all right, Betty, I’ll take it.’
‘Okay, Chief. Putting you through.’
Sturdevent pulled his memo pad in front of him on the desk as the telephone clicks sounded in his ears.
‘Chief Sturdevent?’
‘Morning, Mayor. How are you?’
‘Not very well.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘What exactly is going on?’
‘With what, Mayor?’ As if I don’t know, Sturdevent thought grimly. Mayor James D. Sherwin sounded frosty.
‘With everything in this town. People have been telling me about a destroyed car, flashing lights, trouble at the library, broken windows and God only knows what else.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I’d like to know what’s going on.’
‘We’ve looked into all of these things as they happened, but so far we just haven’t been able to come up with anything concrete. I expect it’s a small gang of kids causing all the trouble.’
‘Then why can’t your people find them and put a stop to this business?’
‘That’s what we’re trying to do, Major, but we haven’t even had a single description to go on. Nobody has seen a thing. Whoever is doing these things has been damn fast’
‘From what I’ve heard there may not even be any vandals involved. The witnesses on Church Street said the windows broke by themselves. What do you know about that?’
‘I never heard of a bunch of windows just breaking by themselves, Mayor, but I guess it’s possible. You know we think some kind of freak wind might have killed that fellow Donner. If it was, I guess the wind could still be blowing around and causing damage. Though I don’t know how it could have gotten inside the library. That building is all shut up all the time because of the air-conditioning system. As for the flashing lights, we’ve had all sorts of phone calls about them. Red lights, blue lights, green lights, flying saucers — you name it, we got it. Again, it could be some strange thing with the weather, I don’t know. Personally, I think some of these people have been staying out in the sun too long.’
‘Well, I want some answers, Chief.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘This situation is getting out of hand.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Christ, who put the bug up Sherwin’s ass?
‘Have you seen the editorial in this morning’s News?’
‘I haven’t had time to read the newspaper yet,’ Sturdevent replied, pleased with himself for getting in the dig.
‘Well, they’re asking questions about all these incidents, suggesting they’re connected and that the town isn’t doing anything about it.’
‘That’s just speculation. They have nothing better to complain about, is all.’
Sherwin ignored that. ‘When they say “the town” they should be saying the police department, because it’s a police matter. But they make it sound like the mayor’s office, and that’s not right.’
‘No, sir.’ Did I vote for this asshole?
‘Now I’m getting flak because of it’
‘I’m sorry about that, but we are doing all we can to get to the bottom of the matter.’
‘Do they know something we don’t know?’
‘Nobody does,’ Sturdevent said.
‘What’s the situation on that Donner death?’
‘It’s an open case in our files, but there’s not much more we can do about it unless some new evidence turns up.’
‘I don’t like that, Chief.’
‘No, sir, neither do I.’ What am I supposed to do, manufacture evidence?
‘People just don’t die like that, and certainly not in a town like this.’
‘No, sir.’
‘Call me by Friday and let me know what you’ve learned by then.’
‘Will do.’ Sturdevent scrawled a note on the pad.
After a pause Mayor Sherwin said, ‘Sorry if I sound angry with you, Al, that’s not the case.’
‘No problem, Mayor.’
‘When you hear a few things from friends… and then this editorial…’
‘I understand.’ Sherwin always backs down a step or two, Sturdevent thought.
‘Well, call me on Friday.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Sturdevent hung up the telephone and stared at his memo pad for a few moments. Sherwin was a nervous creep, but he was the man in the mayor’s seat. Every time he heard something out at the country club he started worrying, and when he worried he had to phone somebody up and make a pest of himself. Hadn’t he phoned the town maintenance department about a stop sign that had been knocked slightly out of kilter by a drunk driver once? What the hell kind of mayor was that? Sturdevent would go into politics himself if it weren’t for the fact that he’d have to deal with even more of those creeps.
*
Martin Lasker knew immediately that it wasn’t going to be a wasted trip — at least not entirely. Marge Calder had terrific legs and they were very much in evidence as she wore her tight white shorts. Above them she had on a plain yellow shirt. Her hair was cut short around her bright, well-scrubbed face. When she opened the door she looked almost as surprised as Lasker did. Evidently she had been expecting some dogged-looking reporter past forty, perhaps with a fedora pushed back on his head and a grubby cigarette stub pasted into one corner of his mouth. Lasker expected to find a blue-rinse specimen, slightly scatter-brained. Instead, here he was sitting on a back patio, admiring the view and sipping lemonade with a very pleasant young woman.
‘So you see,’ she was saying, ‘I don’t have any axe to grind about flying saucers, one way or the other. I don’t believe in them, really, but I don’t disbelieve in them either.’
‘Sure, but you think you’ve seen them?’
‘I saw something, yes. I said they might be flying saucers but I’m not sure. For one thing, they didn’t move.’
‘You saw more than one of them?’ Flying saucers that didn’t move. Okay, lady.
‘Yes, oh, I saw two of them. For three or four nights, on and off, not regularly. Some nights they’re there and other nights they’re not.’
‘I see.’ It sounded decidedly unpromising to Lasker.
‘My husband saw them too.’
‘What does he think they are?’
‘Neon signs.’ Marge Calder made a face.
‘I take it you disagree?’
‘Yes. For one thing, I
drove all around the area, both areas in fact, and there was nothing at all that could be what we saw.’
‘What exactly did they look like?’ Lasker poised his pencil over the pad.
‘Bright blue and kind of oval shaped, but an oval standing on its end. Like a very fat cigar.’ She formed a figure in the air with her hands to indicate what she meant. ‘Sometimes the blue was almost purple, or maroon.’
‘And it didn’t move at all, you say?’
‘Neither of them did. They just kind of sat there, or hovered. What does that sound like to you?’
‘A big neon sign.’ He smiled.
‘Aw no, I told you —’
‘I don’t know what it sounds like, honestly. They may well have been flying saucers, or cigars. You saw them, I didn’t.’
‘You think I’m another dizzy housewife with —’
‘No, I don’t think that at all. I’m just taking down your story. That’s all I can do.’
‘My neighbour, Sylvia, saw it too.’
‘She did?’
‘Yes, the first time. We were out here talking —’
‘At night?’
‘No, this was during the afternoon. The first time.’
‘Really? You must have been able to see it much better in the daylight then.’
‘Well…’ A perplexed look wrinkled across Marge’s face. ‘Not really. It looked just the same, like a blue fire.’
‘Fire?’ Lasker was writing more than he expected.
‘Yes, light or fire, that kind of thing.’
‘What’s your neighbour’s name?’
‘Sylvia Berkowitz. She lives in that house there. I saw her drive away about an hour ago, probably gone shopping before her kids come home from school. But you can get her later, or phone.’
‘Okay. Anybody else see them besides her and your husband?’
‘Not that I know of,’ she answered. ‘And don’t bother asking my husband because I told you what he thinks. He’s a good guy, but he has a closed mind in some respects.’
‘Okay.’ The unnecessary personal comment didn’t escape Lasker. It wasn’t the first one she had volunteered in the twenty minutes they had been talking.
‘Are you going to write all this up?’
Lasker finished his lemonade before answering. ‘Even if I accepted all you have to say at face value, which I’m still not sure I do, I’d have to persuade my editor it was worth running, and that’s not an easy thing to do. He’s a good old-fashioned newspaperman.’
‘I thought so.’
‘What? That we wouldn’t write anything?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why are you anxious that we should?’
‘I’m not a publicity-seeker, if that’s what you mean. In fact, I’d rather have my name left out — my husband wouldn’t be too thrilled to find his wife in the paper as having seen flying saucers. But if you wrote something about it, not naming names, you might find that other people would come forth, other people who might have seen something.’
‘Or a bunch of people —’ Lasker carefully avoided the word ‘cranks’ — ‘who imagine they see something because of what they read in the paper.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Marge said dispiritedly.
‘Would you point out where you saw these lights? Where exactly were they?’
‘Sure.’ She stood and pointed across the valley. ‘See that bit of road that goes up the far side of the valley?’
‘Just a little way above that yellow building?’
‘Yes, but they’re actually about a mile apart. I drove it.’
‘I know. Yeah, I see the spot.’
‘That’s one, though I’m sure it was up in the air, so it could be anywhere on that line of vision, but far, way over on that side.’
‘Okay.’
‘And the other was up there,’ she said, turning to the north. ‘I’m not so sure about exactly where it was, because I only saw that one at night.’
‘Okay, good enough.*
Lasker made another note in his pad because he felt compelled to act like a reporter. She was so serious that he did believe she had seen something. Besides, if she was making it up she would at least have had the lights moving or flashing.
‘Oh,’ Lasker suddenly said, stopping as they walked back to the house.
‘Nothing,’ he replied, recovering quickly. A word had belatedly clicked in his mind. She had used the word ‘fire’ when talking about the sight earlier and Bondarevsky had mentioned swamp-fire to him. Could the two be connected? Could they be the same thing? Swamp-fire, or something else altogether?
As he drove back to the office Lasker was sure he had been given another tiny bit of information that belonged to, but didn’t yet fit in with, all the other loose ends he seemed to be collecting.
*
Lynn Richter flipped through the pages of the expensive magazine, looking briefly at the colour photographs of naked people, mostly women. Occasionally she read a few lines of the short accompanying texts, but they seemed silly. She dropped the magazine on the floor and picked up another. Her husband, Hal, was making odd noises in the bathroom. Like most of the people in the photographs, Lynn had no clothes on. She sat on the round, soft hassock in the living room of their modem apartment. They spent a good deal of money on erotic accoutrements. Perhaps too much, she thought, tossing aside the magazine and taking up yet another. It featured a number of women with various animals.
Hal walked into the room carrying several jars, tubes, and more magazines. With his clothes off he looked chubby rather than stout, but that only made him seem more cuddly to Lynn.
‘Does this stuff turn you on, Hal?’
‘Sometimes,’ he answered, glancing over her shoulder,
‘It doesn’t do much for me.’
‘It’s all part of the experience, honey.’ He dropped everything he was holding on the couch. It was a plain black Naugahyde-upholstered piece of furniture, but the Richters had bought an imitation leopard-skin coverlet for it.
‘What about animals?’ Lynn held up a photograph of a young woman fella ting an Alsatian. The woman seemed to be smiling, which made the picture seem even stranger to Lynn.
‘Bestiality, no…’ Hal said, studying the page: ‘Not personally, that is. But it can be interesting in the historical sense. Remember Leda and the swan? And the Romans used to get up to the darndest things with animals, and it’s all fact.’ Hal was working on a Ph.D. in history. Once every week or two he drove to the University of Connecticut at Storrs to meet with his professor or continue his research at the library.
‘It doesn’t do anything for me.’ Lynn looked through the other magazines on the floor.
‘You have to approach these things with an open mind, honey.’ Hal picked up the magazine Lynn had dropped, Animal Farm.
‘I do have an open mind. I told you.’
‘I know,’ Hal said, distracted.
‘It just doesn’t do much for me.’
‘That’s okay.’
‘It is?’
‘Sure. The important thing is to have an open mind on the subject. Keep your lines clear.’
‘Well, I do, but I don’t see the point of all these magazines if they don’t do anything for me.’
‘You like the films though.’ Hal continued to speak in the same distracted tone of voice as he peered intently at the photographs. He was looking at a sequence featuring a woman and a horse. Old hat, he thought.
‘The films are okay, some of them. The ones that don’t jump all over the place.’
‘Yeah.’
‘But they’re so expensive, Hal.’
‘Yeah. Why don’t you play with the vibrator?’
Lynn sighed histrionically. He was always telling her to play with the vibrator. ‘I don’t want to.’
‘How come?’
‘I feel silly.’
‘That’s silly.’
‘What is?’
‘Feeling silly.’
‘I can’t help i
t.’
‘You’re supposed to enjoy it.’
‘How can I enjoy it if I don’t enjoy it?’
‘You want to be self-aware, not just self-conscious. Explore yourself.’ Hal put down the magazine and picked up a paperback book.
Lynn was examining the personal aids at the back of a journal called Hypermodern Sexology. ‘Some of these people,’ she said, more to herself than Hal.
Hal had found a passage in the paperback. ‘Here you are, Lynn.’ He began to read aloud: ‘“Now you can see why her legs had to be apart, and reasonably free to move — so that she can give herself some sort of” — blank “action when she moves, as she will, when she feels the whip across her ass and tits.” Got that? “Some sort of — blank — action.” What do you think it is, honey?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Come on, Lynn, guess.’
‘Fucking?’
‘Nope.’
‘Screwing? I don’t know.’
‘Wanking.’
‘What’s that?’ Lynn looked more annoyed than puzzled.
‘That’s British for masturbating.’
‘Oh.’ Things like that always fascinated Hal.
‘Incredible,’ Hal murmured, reading on silently.
‘I never cared for that game much. It turns me on more when I read to myself. Not out loud.’
‘Listen —’
‘Oh, Hal.’
Lynn launched herself from the hassock, tackling her husband and tumbling onto the couch with him, and then onto the floor.
‘What the hell —’ Hal exclaimed.
‘Come on, lover,’ Lynn whispered urgently, kissing him and biting him playfully around his ears and neck.
‘Just a minute.’ Hal struggled to get free but Lynn had him in a firm neck-lock.
‘Now you’re ready, now.’
‘Let me get the cream, honey.’
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