by Rachel Ford
Stevenson smiled, wrapping his arm around her shoulders again. Alfred nodded numbly, his heart sinking. “Alright.”
He bought a new phone as she’d suggested and got about halfway through reinstalling his old apps. But seeing Nance’s smiling face pop up in his various feeds – side-by-side with Josh Stevenson who was grinning from ear to ear in every picture – was too much. The apps would wait, he decided.
So would he, as he had nothing else to do. The hours ticked by, one after another, with no update from Nancy.
Around eleven-thirty, he got a text saying, “Did you get a new phone?”
“Yes,” he replied.
For a space, a thumbs up emoji was his only response from her. He had drifted into a half sleep, snoring in an armchair, when his video chat application rang. He started, and the phone flew from his lap.
After a quick scramble to retrieve it before he missed the call, he answered. It was her. “Nance,” he said, a little breathless from the suddenness of the surprise as much as the activity. “What’s up?”
The feed loaded, and he saw that she was frowning. “Alfred, someone scrubbed this thing. I mean, they really scrubbed it.”
“Scrubbed it? Like…with soap and water?”
She blinked at the question, then shook her head. “No, I mean scrubbed the storage – erased everything.”
“Oh.” That made a lot more sense. “Uh…does that mean my pictures are gone?”
“It means they tried to make damned sure they were gone. I’m still working on it, but damn…whatever you saw, they didn’t want anyone else to see.”
This vindication, minor though it was, lifted his spirits a little. “Do you think we should tell Caspersen?” he asked.
“If I can’t do better than that, it’s all we’ll have to tell her. But give me some time first.”
Chapter Eleven
It was just after four in the morning when Alfred’s doorbell rang. At the same time, his phone sounded. Nancy’s name flashed across his screen, with the message, “It’s me.”
He groaned. If he had one fault to find with Nance, it was that she was a night owl. She did her brainstorming in the early hours of the morning, and when she was on a roll, she expected everyone else to live by her clock too. Still, if she was here, it probably had something to do with the case…and he had urged haste.
So, bleary-eyed and exhausted, he pulled himself out of the armchair he’d fallen asleep in and headed to the door. He opened it, yawning, and asked, “Nance?” She was there, but not alone. Josh was beside her. “Uh…and Josh?”
“Alfred,” she said with breathless excitement, “I found something.”
She brushed past him, and Josh followed. “That’s great, Nancy. But, uh, why’s Josh here?” The other man arched an eyebrow at him, and he added, “No offense, of course. Just, this is official business.”
“Oh, I told him about what you saw.”
Alfred felt his jaw gape. “You…did?”
The marine smirked. “Your little green man? Or blue, I guess?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t worry, taxman. It’s not the craziest thing I’ve heard. Remember, I traveled through time. I spent over half a decade in the Cretaceous period.” He shrugged. “I’m pretty openminded.”
“Anyway, I showed him this,” Nancy said, pulling a laptop out of her bag.
Josh grinned. “It did help convince me.”
She rolled her eyes playfully and laughed, and his grin broadened at this shared recollection.
Alfred tried to ignore the feeling of being squarely out in the cold. “What did you find?” he asked as she set her machine up.
She swiped through her login and in a minute brought up an image. “There’s some missing bytes,” she said.
“Bites?”
“Data.”
“Oh.”
“So there’s some grainy spots. But I was able to piece most of it back together. There’s a few more, but this one’s in the best shape.” She turned the screen toward him, and Alfred gaped. It was the alien – his alien, exactly as he remembered it. Wide eyes, navy-colored eyes, mottled blue skin, bald…it all looked exactly the same.
“It’s him,” he said. “Or it.”
“You were right, Alfred,” Nancy said, and there was something like awe in her voice. “An actual extraterrestrial.”
He laughed, a high nervous laugh. His mind was reeling. “This is perfect, Nance. It means I can prove to Caspersen that I’m not crazy.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Josh offered. “This only proves you saw an alien. The jury’s still out on the crazy part.”
She made a face but the marine grinned, entirely unrepentant. Still, he fell silent. Alfred, though, was too excited to care in the moment. “We’ve got them in the act. Don’t you see? Look at that picture: they’re dragging him – it – away.”
He shook his head at the image, at the reedy, wide-eyed figure being drawn away by burly, suit-clad agents. “They’re kidnapping him.”
“Puts a whole new spin on alien abduction,” Josh offered.
Alfred frowned at the other man’s flippancy. “It’s not a joke, Stevenson. This is our government, holding a foreign citizen hostage on American soil. Who knows what they’re doing, what kind of experiments they’re conducting? They could be torturing him for information. They could be-”
“They could be having tea and biscuits,” the marine cut in. “You don’t know that they’re hurting him.”
The taxman scoffed. “Does that look like someone being invited to a tea party?”
“No,” Stevenson admitted in a moment. “But still, we don’t know what their reasons are. Maybe he’s a spy. Maybe he’s a terrorist.”
“Oh Jesus,” Alfred snapped, annoyed by the military man’s immediate reversion into active-duty-thinking. “A terrorist? Really? You see our government kidnapping someone, and the first thing you want to do is blame the victim?”
“It’s possible,” Nancy offered, though with less conviction. “I mean, we don’t know anything about these people, Alfred. We don’t know if they’re friendly or hostile.”
“He could be leading an invasion force. He could be a scout, on a mission to call down the mother ship and take over Earth.”
Alfred stared at the marine, and declared with an upturned nose, “This isn’t one of your space shows, Josh. This is real life.”
“This is a whole new frontier,” Josh countered. “This is unlike anything we’ve ever dealt with. There’s aliens out there – aliens, dude. That changes everything.”
“Why? How?” he demanded.
“It introduces new variables, a whole host of unknowns, onto the galactic scene.”
“Exactly.” The taxman seized on the word. “Unknowns. You don’t start kidnapping people just because they’re unknown.”
“They’re unknown to us. But I mean, hell, if aliens are real, Area 51 is probably real too. That means they’ve probably been studying the extraterrestrials for years.”
“And that gives them the right to kidnap them?”
“It means they have knowledge we don’t. And don’t forget, we didn’t invite them here. They’re trespassers.”
“You can’t just kidnap trespassers! You can’t just haul them off to – well, wherever the heck they were hauling that poor devil off to.”
Josh shrugged. “National security comes first.”
Alfred, though, was really annoyed. “You don’t know that national security is at risk. What kind of thinking is that, anyway? Someone from outer space visits, and you kidnap them for ‘national security’ reasons? What are you going to do if your neighbor’s dog gets too close to your yard, shoot it in ‘self-defense’?”
“Simmer down, taxman,” the marine suggested a touch superciliously. “I’m not saying it’s right. I’m just saying, we don’t know what’s going on, and why they’re doing what they’re doing. It’s above our paygrade.”
The condescension mixe
d with the cavalier disregard for decency finally pushed him too far. “Spoken like a coward,” he snapped. “Blind allegiance to authority coupled with a complete intellectual abdication of your own moral choices.”
Josh’s jaw clenched, and Nancy said sharply, “Alfred. What the hell?”
He blinked at her reproof. “Come on, Nance – you heard him. He’s going to stand by and let the government do whatever they want to another sentient lifeform, just because it’s from another world.”
The marine scoffed. “We’re all going to stand by and let it happen,” he said. “No matter how loud we bray or thump our chests along the way. Unless we want to end up like that alien.” He fixed Alfred with a piercing gaze. “And you know exactly what I’m talking about. What did you do, when they locked you up? Did you make a valiant stand for the alien’s rights, or did you run home with your tail between your legs?”
“Josh,” Nancy reproached. “That’s not helping either.”
“Isn’t it?” He shrugged. “I’m trying to keep this dumbass from getting himself killed. And, for that matter, getting us killed with him.”
“Nobody’s getting killed,” she protested. “Let’s just talk about this rationally.”
“Think about it, Nance,” Josh said. “He stumbled onto – trespassed his way into – probably the biggest secret our government has ever had. The only reason they let him go is because no one would believe him; he sounded like a nutjob. But now we’ve got proof. That means the secret’s out. That means – if he starts flapping his gums – he’s a threat.”
Alfred felt fear mingling with the residual anger. He hadn’t quite thought of it in such stark terms. “A threat?”
“That’s right. And we don’t know what lengths those men in black will go to eliminate a threat, to keep the secret.” Josh’s gaze moved from the taxman to Nancy. “And now it’s not just him who knows, babe. It’s you too.”
“And you,” she said quietly.
He nodded. “And me.”
In the end, they concluded that the secret would die with Alfred’s demolished phone. At Alfred’s urging, Nancy deleted the pictures. “What about your suspension?” she’d asked. “Without the pictures, Caspersen will never believe you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’ll apologize. I’ll tell her I was drunk. That I really thought I saw something, but I know it’s crazy talk.”
So the pictures went. Then, after hugging him goodbye, Nancy went too – Josh’s arm around her as they headed off into the early morning.
Alfred returned to his chair, tossing the marine’s words around in his mind. He couldn’t endanger Nancy. He knew that. He’d put a target on her back when he’d asked her to look at that phone. He shouldn’t have done that. Sugar cookies, he thought. I’m an idiot. At least in deleting the images, they’d removed the target.
But he couldn’t shake the image of that wide-eyed creature, that strange intelligence from another planet, being dragged off to some doom – anymore than he could shake the memory of Nancy’s head nestled against Josh’s shoulder as they walked, arm in arm, away from him.
The images worked in tandem in his mind, and now and again he’d remember the marine’s words: run home with your tail between your legs.
Like a waking nightmare, he couldn’t escape them. Even when he slept, they returned, unbidden, to his thoughts. He woke midday, feeling unrested. His heart was heavy, and his thoughts no lighter than in the morning.
He saw that he’d missed a call from Nancy, and two text messages.
She’d sent “How’s it going?” around nine, and half an hour ago, “You alright, Alfred?”
He replied, “Yeah. Just slept late.”
She sent a thumbs up. It felt impersonal and distant to the taxman; unlike the clever retorts and cute gifs she’d send him before. He imagined Josh sitting beside her, stealing surreptitious glances at her messages and responses, much the way he’d done the days before. Only he’d been too stupid – too cowardly – to seize the initiative.
He’d accused the marine of being a coward, and, he thought, it was true. He was a coward. He was willing to compartmentalize his conscience, to lock it away as needed when needed.
But Alfred was a coward too, where Josh had not been. He’d let fear – fear of rejection, fear of moving too fast – hold him back when he should have told Nancy how he felt. And he’d lost her. And in the moment, as his heart ached, that seemed a far less forgivable cowardice than the marine’s.
But what was done was done. He’d been a coward, and he’d lost. But he was done being a coward. Maybe it was precisely because he had lost, because it seemed he had nothing left to lose. But Alfred Favero was done being a coward. He was not going to compartmentalize his conscience.
There was a helpless creature, a visitor from another world, being held captive. As his mind considered the scope of horrors that visitor might, even as he sat on his recliner, be subject to, Alfred’s heart burned with anger.
He was an American, dammit. He was a public servant, an officer of the law – a Senior Analyst with the Internal Revenue Service. He had sworn to uphold that same law. And he would not sit idly by while a sentient being was kidnapped and tortured.
The die is cast, he thought. This was his Rubicon, and sink or swim, he would cross it.
Chapter Twelve
It was shortly after midnight when Alfred rolled into Sand Plains. He passed Phil Fletcher’s gaudy RV, with its billboard-style collection of bumper stickers, parked in a public area. He passed Deputy Beck’s squad car, making its way down the quiet stretch of road. He was grateful that he’d thought to rent a car for the express purpose of avoiding detection by local law enforcement, and any other interested parties in the area.
Aside from the exterior sign and the neon window light that read “Sorry, We’re Closed,” the museum was dark. So were the restaurant and gift shops. Alfred pulled into a public parking lot at the far end of town, just down the road from Landing Site Earth, and cast a glance around. The street was empty, the sidewalks were clear. As far as he could tell, he was the only person awake in this part of Sand Plains.
He stepped out of the car and closed the door as quietly as possible. Then, he headed around the back of the museum, the way he’d entered two nights ago. The rear door was, predictably, locked, and so were the windows.
Alfred threw another glance around, took a long, steadying gulp of air, and smashed a window pane on the door. The glass shattered with a terrible noise, and every nerve stood on end for half a minute as he waited for some unseen presence to descend on him. But stillness returned, and the night remained quiet and unbroken.
The taxman reached a gloved hand inside, feeling for the lock. It was a tricky business, with gloves on, but eventually his fingers found purchase on the knob lock. With a quick turn, he heard the mechanism unlock. He was in.
He traced his steps from the far end of the museum to the office toward which he’d last seen the alien dragged. That Cassidy’s office was not what it seemed, he had no doubt. It was too centrally situated to function as any kind of holding cell in its own right. Even if the museum staff were in on the secret, someone, sometime, would hear something.
No, the office was a means of entry to some other area: a secret room, a hidden passage, or maybe even a spacetime field generator. As far as he knew, that technology had only been developed by Futureprise Corporation. But accepting that government had concealed and abducted extraterrestrial visitors filled Alfred’s mind with wondrous, and nefarious, possibilities. Nothing, he thought, was entirely out of the realm of possibility. Nothing was beyond Uncle Sam’s abilities.
The office door was unlocked, and the taxman was relieved. He had not thought too far beyond how to open the backdoor, and while he assumed himself capable of battering down an office door, his shoulder was relieved not to be so tested.
He closed the door after him and switched on his phone’s flashlight setting. Cassidy’s office was not much
larger than his own office at work. It housed a wooden desk and a leather office chair, and two bare seats on the opposite side of the desk. Against the walls stood bookcases overburdened with dusty volumes. The desk was strewn with papers and notes. What a slob, he thought with a sniff. Alfred was of the firm opinion that a tidy office indicated a tidy mind. Mike Cassidy’s mind, as far as he could tell, was what a nuclear blast zone might look like – after a few hurricanes and other natural disasters stopped to visit.
Conspicuously absent from all of this mess, though, was anything like a second door. It was just an ordinary, if ill kept, office, with boring furniture, four plain walls and no windows.
Alfred frowned. No windows? The office was on an outside wall, facing the street. Why would an outer wall be lacking windows? He rounded the desk, heading to the suspicious paneling. The walls in this part of the building looked like they’d skipped a few rounds of renovation. They were decked out in paneling straight from the seventies.
The taxman cringed at the sight, but got to work. He had read enough detective stories as a kid to remember what to do in such cases; he promptly set about tapping the walls, listening for a hollow sound that might indicate space beyond.
This was more practical in theory than practice, though, as Alfred had never measured the sound of rapping on a standard wall before. Essentially, he had no control group against which to compare the results of his experimentation. The whole wall sounded hollow to him. Then again, so did the other walls. They were interior walls, though. Perhaps they were meant to sound hollow.
He stood back frowning after a minute of pointless rapping. Sugar cookies. He was as much in the dark as he’d ever been, but now his knuckles were sore into the bargain.
Alfred sat on the desk, staring at the suspect wall, at its broad stripes of bland brown panels and its faded print. If it was a fake wall, he thought, it was a cleverly concealed one. Everything seemed to line up. There were no rough edges, no worn or damaged portions.
