Henley glanced at her, and she could see him suddenly crawl back from his statement.
‘Look, I know how crazy that sounds and all but that’s the only connection I have that makes any sense.’
‘I’m all ears,’ Lopez promised. ‘I just wanna get to the bottom of this. You got time to meet me somewhere else, real quick?’
‘Ten minutes,’ Henley replied as he turned for a patrol car parked nearby. ‘Jefferson Avenue, down on the south west corner. We can talk there and won’t be seen.’
Henley made his way toward a patrol car, and Lopez walked to her Corvette. As she did so she spotted a white van with blacked–out windows parked across the street. She didn’t know why it drew her attention, maybe some sixth sense. She kept one eye on it as she pulled out of the parking lot, but the vehicle didn’t follow her as she turned south.
***
XV
Jefferson Avenue was a leafy backroad that ran north to south behind the town of Cairo. Lopez drove her Corvette headed south from the top end, and spotted Officer Henley’s patrol car parked about half way down, shielded from view of the town by rows of trees and dense foliage.
She pulled in and killed the engine as Henley approached her. The sun was already high in the afternoon sky as Lopez got out. She was running out of time here, and in a town that she barely knew it was going to be tough to track Ethan after dark. Whatever Henley had to tell her was going to either make or break the case.
‘Talk to me,’ she said as Henley joined her.
‘My dad was working here in ‘73 when it all happened,’ Henley began. ‘Starting in the winter, the February I think, police over in Piedmont, Missouri received over five–hundred UFO sighting reports in just four months. They called it the Bushy Creek UFO scare because it almost caused mass panic at the time, just a few years after the government had declared UFOs to be a dead issue, nothing to worry about.’
Henley leaned against his patrol car and folded his arms against the chill air as he spoke.
‘Down in Wayne County, they started getting reports of a metallic disc with what were described as “prongs” poking out of the front. No sound, about thirty to forty feet in diameter and capable of moving at incredible speeds. A high school football team returning home on Highway Sixty saw it first and watched it for about twenty minutes, followed by a lady called Edith Boatwright in her farmhouse in nearby Mill Springs, who saw the object at the same time and got a real close look. She said she could see objects inside of this thing.’
‘She was that close?’
‘It was hovering over her yard, and she saw it from her bedroom window,’ Henley confirmed. ‘I mean, it would sound like fantasy, right? But people across the state were seeing this thing night after night, same object, same description. Metallic disc, prongs on the front, red, green and amber lights around the middle. They all saw the same thing. A man named Earl Turnborough saw the object hovering over Highway Forty–Nine during a thunderstorm. When the lightning flashed, he could see the disc and a sort of dome on top. He watched the thing for like ten minutes.’
‘Okay, so they saw something. What’s that got to do with this cult you mentioned?’
‘The cult showed up after the scare was over, so my father told me,’ Henley explained. ‘A couple of sightings of the object were also accompanied by sightings of military jets either following or searching for this thing.’
Now, Henley had her attention. ‘Military jets, you’re sure?’
‘Yeah, a hundred per cent. My father served in the Air Force before joining the PD, he knew his airplanes. Up until that point the UFO had been seen in the sky, low over fields, even under lakes, glowing through the water, but then it showed up over Central Illinois Public Service Company’s generating station on the Mississippi. An engineer called Willis Hughes was able to give a detailed description of it, and then four military jets appeared and seemed to be searching for the UFO. Thing is, it had started affecting its surroundings. The UFO passed over the local KPWB radio station, which was unable to sign on the next morning because one of the transformers was blown out. It got so frantic that people could tell if the UFO was nearby because their television sets would lose reception – folks would head outside and, sure enough, the thing would be hovering somewhere about the place.’
‘The jets showed up there too?’
‘No, just at the power station,’ Henley explained. ‘A Mrs. Stucker was driving down Highway 60 in broad daylight when she saw it hovering off one side of the road. She spotted three domes on it, tripod landing gear of some kind, looked to be made of a silvery metal. The thing shot off, but she returned later with two other witnesses and they found a thirty–foot circle of foliage twisted counter–clockwise with some branch tips snapped off. A month later, a sceptical physicist from Southeast Missouri State University who requested to remain unidentified by local investigators showed up to debunk the sightings. The guy had multiple sightings of his own in a single night and left the area, apparently very disturbed. Sightings moved north west, and the UFO turned up here in Cairo for a few nights toward the end of the scare. Right after that, a military team showed up.’
‘What did they want?’
‘They didn’t speak much to folks, so my father said. They drove around in blacked–out trucks, wore uniforms without any insignia, and helicopters would be seen flying about the area, always at night. The UFO showed up a few times, mostly out over the Mississippi or thereabouts, and then suddenly everything went quiet. No more helicopters, no more UFO, nothing. But here’s the thing – for six months, the island of Angelo Towhead was declared off limits. Nobody went there under fear of death, apparently, and several times my father said he saw military boats delivering supplies to the island even though supposedly nobody lives there.’
Now Lopez started to sense something forming in her mind, a structure to why the mayor might not want to talk about the cult.
‘How big is the cult, do you think?’ she asked Henley.
‘I don’t know, but they’ve been working out here a long time yet nobody has ever seen them or any evidence that they’re even there, apart from my father seeing those shipments arriving on the towhead. When folks stopped seeing military personnel around here, they figured that whatever they had been up to out there on the island must have been finished. There’s a former military post at the headland close to the towhead, a Civil War fort that’s now a museum. Most all the town saw military vehicles use the fort to resupply the island, then, nothing.’
Lopez knew that the towhead was maybe a couple miles long, big enough to easily hide a sizeable population, but the lack of supply routes troubled her. Folks wouldn’t be able to survive long out there on the island in isolation.
‘I’m gonna need some help,’ she said finally. ‘It’s only a guess, but I’d say that the military are up to something out there and they’re paying the mayor and the chief of police to stay quiet about it.’
‘Figures,’ Henley replied, looking relieved. ‘Question is, what the hell can we do about it? If I raise my voice I’ll lose my job.’
Lopez thought for a moment, and then she reached for her cell phone and flicked through a few images before she found the one she wanted.
‘You recognize this guy?’
She showed him a mug–shot of Dwayne Austin, and Henley nodded slowly.
‘Yeah, pretty sure I do. Didn’t see him around much, just here and there. How do you know him?’
‘He’s the man my partner was arrested for shooting, although he couldn’t possibly have done it. How about this guy?’
Lopez showed Henley the image of the man on the bus. Although the image was pixelated, Henley again nodded.
‘Same thing, he definitely looks familiar but I don’t know him by name.’
It wasn’t a slam–dunk but Lopez felt more confident than ever that she was on the right trail and in the right place. The links between this abandoned town in deep southern Illinois and Dwayne Austin’s sho
oting in Kankakee were too strong to be ignored. She checked her watch: half two. The sun would be down before six, and she knew that Ethan had likely been brought down here by the same thinking that had brought her to the town. He was chasing someone, or something, and the most likely place to find him now would be on Angelo Towhead.
‘I need to get across to that island,’ she said.
***
XVI
Ethan knew that he was being watched.
Although the woods were still and unnaturally silent, he could see evidence of people having been here in recent weeks. To the untrained eye the forest appeared deserted, but Ethan’s training in the Marines had taught him to identify trails of all kinds, and there were plenty here to choose from. Animal trails criss–crossed the forest before him, recently snapped twigs betraying the passing of animals along with their tracks in the soft forest floor, but it was the marks on the trees that caught his eye.
Although most folks could learn to cover a trail with a little training, scaling a tree was a whole different matter. Boots scraped bark, slid across the damp surface and left smears of mud and grime on trunks. Ethan managed to resist the temptation to look up, but within the canopy of trees he expected to see at least one hide as he made his way through the forest.
Almost the entire towbar was covered in dense woods, with only a few scant clearings scattered across its two–mile length. As Ethan made his way through the dense brush so he sensed rather than saw the presence of people watching him from further within the woods. The feeling was unmistakable: a tingling in the base of the neck that raised the heckles, a desire to look into the eyes of someone who appeared not to be there. In his time with the Marines, Ethan had been instructed in the art of wilderness survival, and one of the key tips in hunting wild game was never to look directly at them for they would eventually become alert to the hunter’s presence. Scientists could say all they wanted about how the “sixth–sense” was an urban myth, nothing more than coincidence. Ethan knew better, because wild game was not prey to the psychological assumptions of humankind. They knew when they were being watched and they reacted accordingly, usually because their lives depended upon it, and human beings were themselves little more than wild game with unusually large brains.
Ethan curved around where he felt that those watching him were positioned, knowing that they would flank and then surround him as he moved. It was smarter to let them think that they had caught him, rather than let on too early that he knew exactly what he was doing and where he was. Ethan kept moving and waited for his pursuers to make their move.
Moments later, they did just that.
From the brush four men burst into view, draped in Ghillie suits that perfectly concealed them among the foliage. Each was armed with a rifle pointed directly at Ethan as he froze in the middle of the woods and put his hands in the air.
‘Stay where you are.’
Ethan said nothing. It wasn’t like he was moving now anyway.
The four men closed in on him, rifles pointed unwaveringly at his chest. Ethan could see that they were modern M16s equipped with suppressors, the weapon easily identifiable even in the gloom of the forest. To Ethan, it suggested an unfamiliarity with weapons. Suppressors, usually referred to as silencers, were in fact not designed for the purpose of silencing the passage of a bullet. They were designed to protect the shooter from the noise of discharge and the muzzle flare that betrayed a shooter’s position. The movies ignored the fact that a bullet made most of its sound via its supersonic passage through the air after it had left the barrel. Equipping M16s with suppressors out here in the open might reduce the sound of a shot a little, but it wasn’t going to let these men go around killing folk silently.
‘On your knees.’
Ethan stayed on his feet, watching the men and waiting to see how determined they were, whether they would follow up on their command. The answer came with a crack to the back of Ethan’s legs as an unseen fifth man silently attacked him from behind. Ethan dropped onto his knees as his wrists were yanked behind his back.
Ethan let himself be bound using what felt like rough cord, but he pressed his knuckles together and locked his wrists in position as firmly as he could, leaving a small gap between them, enough wriggle–room to maybe break out of the bonds if he needed to.
‘Get up.’
Ethan stood, and was prodded into motion by the man behind him.
The group of gunmen encircled him and led him deeper into the woods. The fading light and thick trees darkened the woods until Ethan could barely see where they were going. The gunmen seemed familiar with the terrain if not their weapons, and walked easily through the darkness until they reached a vague clearing in the trees.
There were no lights, nothing to betray the presence of people here, but Ethan could smell a faint scent of cooked food in the air. He squinted in the darkness and heard a low whistle and a soft rapping sound from somewhere ahead of them. Suddenly a shaft of brilliant light burst into view from the ground itself. It took a moment for Ethan to realize that he was looking at a trap door of some kind. Moments later, he was prodded and shoved down into the light, squinting as he stumbled down wooden steps.
The scent of damp air wafted around him as his eyes adjusted to the light of lamps fixed to wood–panelled walls. There was a faint hint of woodsmoke, the air earthy and almost wholesome. Ethan saw a tunnel leading away from him that was slightly downhill. He was pushed down it and into a large open area that he figured was maybe ten feet below the surface.
To his amazement, the central area was ringed with a series of further tunnels like the spokes of a wheel, lined with lights that flickered with a low–watt glow. Before him was a large group of people all sitting on chairs around the edge of the area, and at their head was a man on what looked like a throne.
‘Welcome, Mr Warner.’
Ethan did not react to the use of his name, but he was surprised to hear it none the less. The man was older than Ethan, perhaps sixty–five, his hair white and shaved close to his scalp, his shoulders rangy and his eyes glittering with the glow of the enlightened or the sparkle of the fanatic. Ethan couldn’t tell for sure which. He wore a check shirt and jeans with leather sandals, his sleeves rolled up despite the cool air beneath ground, and his jaw was speckled with white stubble. Flinty gray eyes peered at Ethan with interest, and he folded his hands beneath his jaw as he examined Ethan as though he were some kind of new and exotic species.
‘You don’t seem surprised to be here,’ the man ventured.
‘Who are you?’
Ethan kept the questions simple. Still sizing up the situation, he was also aware that the gunmen were still behind him, watching the exchange.
‘My name is Shilo Devilgne,’ came the reply. ‘I have lived here in this commune since the early seventies. I don’t suppose you knew anything about it before your arrival here?’
Ethan’s presence could not have been something Shilo knew about until Ethan had rowed up to the beach head, as he’d been bailed and travelled south all in a matter of hours. Therefore, Shilo must have known about Ethan long before his arrest, and Ethan began to sense that this man was the connection between Ethan and Dwayne Austin’s death.
‘Dwayne sent me here,’ Ethan replied.
Shilo smiled, his chin still resting on his hands.
‘If only that were true,’ he replied softly. ‘Sadly, Dwayne became a liability that threatened our very existence, as have you.’
Ethan waited in silence. Shilo clearly was expecting a response, more questions, but Ethan did not want to play by the cult leader’s rules so he remained defiantly still and silent.
‘You’re an interesting individual, Warner,’ Shilo went on. ‘I’d have expected a man abducted in the woods to have had more questions for me, but you have asked almost nothing. That leads me to believe that you wanted to come here, to be captured.’
Ethan remained silent, and Shilo chuckled.
‘Come now Ethan, we
’re here to talk. You came here to find out what we’re doing and…’
‘Why did you murder Dwayne Austin in cold blood?’
Ethan didn’t particularly want to engage with Shilo, but he did want to gauge the response of the gathered cult members when he spoke. Several of them looked up sharply at Ethan, and he saw a glimmer of consternation flicker across Shilo’s arrogant features.
‘But Mr Warner, you’re charged with his murder, are you not? You shot him in the head in Kankakee.’
‘You and I both know that the whole thing was set up. What you don’t know is that my partner is on the case and that the police already know that this cult was something to do with Dwayne’s death. It won’t be long before they find you here.’
‘I don’t believe any of that for a moment,’ Shilo replied in a whisper. ‘This commune has existed with the blessing of Cairo for decades and…’
‘I’m not talking about Cairo police,’ Ethan cut the man off. ‘I’m talking about Chicago PD, Kankakee Sheriff’s Office and several witnesses to your crimes. How do you think I got bailed while on a homicide charge? They knew I didn’t do it, and wanted time to figure out who did.’
Ethan was lying, of course, but Shilo might not know that. Ethan figured his reach was no more than Cairo and the surrounding areas, maybe trips out further afield to recruit the poor and helpless to his cult, but nothing more. They didn’t have the man power. Ethan could only see maybe fifty people around him, all of them watching with interest.
Shilo appeared unfazed by Ethan’s threat.
‘They won’t find us here,’ he replied. ‘They never have, we’ll make sure of that.’
Ethan shook his head.
‘I found you within a couple hours of driving into Cairo. How long do you think it’s gonna take the FBI or similar to locate you?’
Shilo stood, surprisingly tall despite his age, and smiled at Ethan.
‘We’re not worried about them, because I recently heard the entire Sheriff’s office is on a manhunt for one bail runner called Ethan Warner, considered dangerous and possibly armed.’
Vanishing Point: A Warner & Lopez prequel novel Page 8