Roswell's Secret

by Vannetta Chapman

  Joe sat down. Dean poured him more coffee from the pot.

  “A car arrived at three.” Joe took a deep drink of the coffee. “I went to the window. Saw her go out and talk to a man. He tied her hands. She let him. She just put her hands out and let him. Then, he blindfolded her. He helped her in the back seat and they drove off.”

  “How long were they gone?” Dean leaned forward, thinking of distance, thinking their home lay halfway between White Sands and Roswell.

  “Two, maybe three hours. She came back before daylight. At first, I stayed at the window, too terrified to move, afraid they’d be right back. Then, I thought of Dakota. I ran out back, searched for him, kept calling. By the time I found him it was too late.”

  The tears he hadn’t shed for his wife came now.

  “We’d had him since Bodie started high school. I drove into the desert a ways and buried him. I didn’t want her to see how he’d really died. The next day I told her coyotes had gotten him. He’d been known to spar with them before, to protect his territory. He was fearless.”

  “What kind of car did they drive, Joe?”

  “A Land Rover. I couldn’t see the color or the plates. They didn’t turn on their lights until they were down the road a bit.”

  “Do you know what type of poison she’d used?” Dean asked.

  Joe shook his head. “But I started eating out more.”

  Dean waited for Lucy to speak.

  “It could have been several things,” Lucy’s voice softened. “She would have wanted something odorless and colorless, tasteless. Maybe arsenic or thallium. But why would she want to poison you, Joe? What threat were you to her?”

  He straightened up, regained some of the poise he must have once possessed in full measure. “When you’re married over twenty years, you know each other in ways it’s hard to imagine. She knew I knew...something. Maybe she wanted me to die before this—”

  He reached out and touched the stack of papers on the table. “Before all this started. I’m not sure. After that night she tried to kill me, our marriage became an all-out war, one played like a game of chess. I no longer tried to hide my maneuvers. I took to locking my door at night, bought the gun, let her see me practicing with it. Maybe I could have killed her.”

  Joe’s admission hung in the air between them.

  “How did you find all of this if she deleted the files? How do we know she didn’t plant it, expecting you to find it?”

  “She covered her tracks well—deleting files as she went, then clearing out the recycle bins and internet caches. But nothing is ever completely deleted on a computer or a cell phone. The physical address is deleted, but the data still exists. I could retrieve her internet history, call up any messages she had received or sent, even view instant messages. Of course, she didn’t use the computer much, but as you can see there are quite a few pieces here.”

  “Too many.” Dean and Joe studied Lucy’s neat stacks. “Any references to bio-agents?”

  “No.”

  “Contaminants?”

  “No.”

  “Viruses?”

  “No. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  Instead of explaining, Dean stood and paced around the table. “We know she didn’t do this alone. Lucy and I have to find who controlled her, and we have to find them before sunrise. If we don’t, the sweep occurring in Roswell tonight will expand. Then there will be no containing it.”

  LUCY POINTED TO THE pile on the farthest side of the table.

  “These are communications with other people in her organization.” She noticed Joe pale as he picked up the stack and paged through it. He was holding up well, but how much shock could one man endure?

  “Our technicians will be able to track down the names and addresses, but I suspect they will all be dead ends.”

  Dean nodded. “The techs can do a lot, but anonymity is one wall that stops them every time. What else?”

  “Content in this stack is useless to us, although it could be used to build a case in a court of law.” She motioned to the next stack. “This contains more technical material. Something tells me she researched more than she needed to know here.”

  “What makes you think so?” Dean leaned forward, scanned the top sheet which had specifications for the RQ-7 Shadow unmanned aerial vehicle.

  “First of all, she never refers in her communications to what she accessed. Secondly, there’s a lot of it. Look at the size of this stack—it has to be four inches. Most soldiers go where they need to go, do what they’re told to do.”

  Joe laughed—the broken, hollow sound felt like splinters against Lucy’s heart.

  “That wasn’t what Emily believed. Some of the interviews she gave after Bodie’s funeral were pretty twisted.”

  Dean sat back and stared at Joe. “What interviews?”

  “Remember this was 2001. Media followed every casualty of the war at first. Emily didn’t handle it well. She was still grieving, questioning everything—and I do mean everything. She tried to place the blame for Bodie’s death on his superiors. Some of that was printed in a few national magazines.”

  “That might have been when she caught the attention of some anti-government group. Do you remember any unusual phone calls or visits?”

  “The phone rang so much, I unplugged it,” Joe admitted. “After that, we changed to an unlisted number. Someone else’s son or daughter died and our thirty seconds of fame were over.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe some contact Emily made during that time reappeared in Roswell a few years later.” Dean rubbed his face, then reached for more coffee. “What else, Lucy?”

  She indicated the next stack. It, too, was large.

  “Flight patterns, aerials, maps, routes. I can’t tell of what. No labels. Again, the techs will be able to identify some of it with landmarks, but it will take time.”

  “Something we don’t have.” Dean pointed to a single sheet sitting by itself. “I suppose that sheet is important.”

  Lucy picked it up, stared at it, and handed it over to him.

  “I don’t know what this is. It doesn’t make any sense at all, which is why I set it aside. Obviously it’s encrypted—but why would she go to the trouble to encrypt it, then delete it? Seems redundant, not to mention it suggests a level of paranoia that isn’t called for.”

  “Sort of like poisoning your husband,” Joe said it softly, but his eyes were on the sheet. He angled his chair closer to Dean’s.

  “I’ve never been good at codes,” Dean admitted. “I’m a field rat. All right. So what we have is nothing—”

  “Hang on.” Joe grabbed a pencil, and began substituting letters over the numbers on the sheet.

  “I’m sure it’s a military encryption.” Dean leaned forward hopefully nonetheless.

  “Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. Computer code is written in a basic binary—zeroes and ones. Emily wasn’t good with numbers. She couldn’t even keep the checking account balanced. She loved to do the puzzles in the Sunday paper though. I think she’d pick a common encryption system. Like possibly...” He finished substituting the last few letters and pushed the sheet toward Dean. “a modified type of Morse code.”

  They all stared at the words Joe had penciled. As they read to the bottom of the page, a deadly silence fell over the room until Lucy was sure she could hear the beating of all their hearts. She started back at the top of the page and began reading again, thinking if she did, the words would mean something different than they had the first time.

  Jaclynn Stone, Robert Thacker, August 1

  Angela Brewer, August 2

  David Johnson, August 5

  Felix Canyon, August 9

  Albuquerque, Dallas, Las Vegas, Mexico City, Montreal, Vancouver, August 11

  White Sands, Luke AFB, Hill AFB, USAF Academy, August 12

  For the space of another few heartbeats no one said a word as the list of targets, past present and future, stared up at them like epitaphs etched in mar
ble.

  Joe stood, nearly stumbled, as he pushed away from the table. Stuffing his shaking hands into his pockets, he fled from the room.

  Lucy stared after him, wondering how he could endure the weight of even more pain. To live with a monster was one thing, to be threatened by one, another. But to be confronted with the scope of Emily’s malevolence might push him beyond his ability to recover.

  She moved next to Dean, who still stared at the paper. “Is it a mission list?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not a homicide detective, but this looks like a kill list to me.” He started at the top of the page, ran his finger down the list and stopped at Angie’s name. “What do you notice is missing before Angie?”

  “Commander Martin sent me the pictures of two victims.”

  “In addition to the hiker I saw at White Sands. And Martin mentioned a fourth—”

  “An agent, which is how we knew a mole had infiltrated our unit.” Lucy reached for her bottle of water. Suddenly she needed a drink badly.

  “If Emily were listing everyone they had tested the bio-weapon on then there would be at least four names before Angie’s. Since there’s only two here, I think this is a kill list.”

  “I don’t know what that is, Dean.”

  “It’s not something a terrorist would have, but it’s something a killer sometimes needs in order to keep functioning emotionally.” Dean picked up the piece of paper and surveyed the room one last time. “Pull together any extra supplies we might need. We’re leaving in fifteen minutes.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but I think there’s something Joe isn’t telling us.” Dean pulled his Glock and chambered a round. “When he does, maybe we’ll know where we need to go next.”

  Dean stepped out onto the patio. He didn’t want to shoot Joe, but he was willing to be responsible for one more death if it meant saving tens of thousands. While torture wasn’t his field of expertise, he was confident he could get the information he needed.

  “She killed all of those people.” It was an admission, torn from Joe’s soul.

  “Either directly or indirectly—yes. I believe so.”

  “Even Angie?”

  “Yeah. Even Angie.”

  Whatever thin thread had held Joe’s world together snapped then. Dean remained near the door as sobs racked the man—with his shoulders hunched forward and his head bowed. Dean wanted to allow him time to grieve. Unfortunately, war seldom allowed for such luxuries.

  He holstered the Glock and sat down next to Joe. “I think Angie’s death was unplanned. She must have stumbled onto a meeting the night we went dancing. If Emily hadn’t killed her, someone else would have.”

  Joe nodded, but still didn’t look up.

  “What haven’t you told me, Joe? We don’t have much time. Emily’s list indicates the substance they’re using—a bio-weapon—will be released over those cities in a few hours. If we have any chance of stopping it, I need to know what you know.”

  “I wish I’d killed her. I wish I’d reported my suspicions. I had no hard evidence, but maybe the authorities could have done something. Could have saved some of those people...”

  “Whoever she worked for would have recruited someone else. I need to know who she worked for since Bodie’s death. I need a name or a location.”

  Joe took a deep breath and peered out across the desert, out beyond Dakota’s grave. “Four years ago, Emily said she needed to get away, spend some time alone. She claimed she was driving up to Santa Fe. I didn’t buy it. We’d been sleeping in separate rooms, like I said before. I thought she might be sneaking off to see someone. Maybe I was past caring, but... It’s a hard thing when you suspect your wife of adultery. Normally I wouldn’t have done it.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I bought a GPS tracking device and hid it in her car—top of the line, no expense spared. Geeks are very good at some things. I sat right there in the study and tracked her. She did go north, like she claimed, but she didn’t go to Santa Fe. Instead she went to some little cabins in Taos. This package I bought with the system worked like Google Earth—but it provided live images. I could even make out the cabin number. Afterwards it was only a matter of hacking into the reservation system and getting a name on the reservation.”

  “You think you got a real name?”

  “I know I did. Over the years I would check it again occasionally. She never went off over the weekend after that, so I’m not sure they were sleeping together. Maybe they had to meet in person once. But he’s a real person all right. His name is Tony Goodwin. Major General Tony Goodwin.”

  “All right. It’s a start. Once the phones and internet come back up we can do a search. Until then—”

  “You don’t have to wait to do a search. I know where he is.”

  Dean had started back into the house. He stopped halfway through the patio door, and somehow he knew the next words that were coming out of Joe’s mouth.

  “A year ago he transferred to White Sands. He’s third in command now.”

  Ω

  Lucy sat staring at Emily’s handheld cell phone. A single previous location blinked on the map application. It had to be the key.

  Dean and Joe walked back into the room, both talking at once. Joe’s color had improved from ten minutes ago.

  “We have a name, Lucy. And we have a location. We’re headed to White Sands.”

  “Do you have a specific place in White Sands?”

  Dean threw a scowl her way. “We’ll figure the exact location out when we get there.”

  “It’s only the largest military installation in the U.S. No worries.”

  “I know its size, Doc. I’ve been there, remember? So, the sooner we get started, the better.”

  Lucy watched him collect what supplies they’d taken out of their pack. Instead of helping, she studied the cell phone’s display. “Have you ever seen this, Joe?”

  “No, why?”

  “It was Emily’s. It contained a single destination on the map application. I think it must have been important. The trick is we don’t know the starting point. In fact, the corresponding GPS coordinates have been erased. I don’t know why she would do that.” Lucy continued staring at the unit, then tilted her head and studied Joe. “You said before that Emily tried to kill you twice. When was the second time?”

  “The night Angie died.”

  Both Lucy and Dean stared at him. Joe held up his hands in a gesture of surrender.

  “You’re thinking I should have called someone, should have turned her in then. I would have, but I didn’t know Angie had died, didn’t find out until the next day. Even after all this, I don’t know...” He reached for the wall, supported himself against it with one arm, held Dean off with the other. “Give me a minute.”

  Finally he said, “Emily loved Angie. I know that. She might not have cared about me, but she loved that girl. That night, I’d been up late, working on the computer. I heard her walk in, and I came out to get a drink from the kitchen. There was a butcher block of knives on the counter. She lunged for it. I think...”

  Joe stopped and wiped his hands on his pants. “I think she would have killed me that night if she had been faster. I tried to talk to her, but she left. Didn’t come back again until the next night. I still can’t believe...”

  “Angie might have stumbled on something she shouldn’t have.” Dean said.

  “I’m sorry, Joe.” Lucy met his eyes for a moment, then went back to studying the cell phone.

  Dean finished packing and picked up the sheet of paper again. Folding it carefully, he put it in his pocket. Lucy glanced at him, but still didn’t move. Rolling his eyes, Dean stepped behind her.

  “We need to go, Lucy. Now isn’t the time to play with toys.”

  “This must have been important though. It was one of the few things Emily kept on her. There’s not much activity on this phone at all, but there is this map. It’s easy to create one.” She fiddl
ed with the app again, and the unit beeped.

  “I’ve heard that beep before,” Joe said.

  “Why create a map, unless you think you can’t find your way back somewhere?”

  “Or if you’re blindfolded the first time you go there.” Joe backed up to the table, pressed his hands against it for support. “That’s when I heard it. Before the car arrived the night they came for Emily. The night they blindfolded her and bound her hands.”

  “She knew they were meeting at a different place.” Lucy said. “And she wanted to know where.”

  Dean set the pack down and frowned at the cell. “So the map starts here, but where does it end?”

  “It ends where Goodwin is.” Joe motioned toward his computer. “The internet isn’t working, but I’ve downloaded maps of all the surrounding areas. I use them for my consulting work.”

  He pulled up a map of Chaves County, then keyed in a route from his address to White Sands.

  “Hold the cell phone next to the screen, Lucy.” Dean said. Lucy could feel his impatience. He wanted to get on the Harley. She, too, could sense their time slipping away, but she knew they were close to something important.

  Lucy zoomed out on the view, showing the entire map on the small screen. She held it up next to Joe’s flat screen monitor. Joe’s map ran from his house to the end of the White Sands’ perimeter. Emily’s went much deeper into the military installation. Otherwise, the two could have been identical.

  “Looks like our search area just got a whole lot smaller,” Dean said.

  JOE FOLLOWED DEAN AND Lucy out to the carport. “Are you sure there’s nothing else I can do? I know I can’t make up for all the damage Emily has done, but...” the words drifted away into the night.

  Dean heard the desperation in Joe’s voice. He’d tried again inside the house to tell him he wasn’t responsible for Emily’s actions, but the guilt the man bore weighed heavily on him. The guilt and the grief. Dean struggled with the decision he had to make.

  Straddling the Harley, having Lucy climb on the bike behind him, fit her body next to his, he tried to imagine life without her. Tried and failed. They would need to deal with those questions at some point.