Time to Time: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (Ashton Ford Series)

by Pendleton, Don

  I reached Dalton’s apartment complex a few minutes before eleven but then it took me another ten minutes to find the apartment in that sprawl.

  It was obviously a bachelor pad, and the young deputy had company—two other guys—obviously cops also. They were drinking beer and watching a fight on television.

  Dalton looked okay, relaxed, confident. I knew by the way he looked at me that I was familiar but he did not have me pegged. I knew also that I had to say the right thing at the right time or get the door slammed in my face.

  So I introduced myself by name only and told him, "I need your help. I saw the same thing you saw in Malibu Canyon the other night. No one will believe me either."

  He stared at me for a moment then threw the door wide and beckoned me inside. It was a small apartment, and the TV fight was on low volume. The other guys heard my pitch at the door and they were giving me an interested inspection as I joined them.

  Dalton introduced us. One was Sam and the other was John; I got no last names. Someone handed me a can of beer then they all sat down. I popped the top and took a taste as I took a chair off to the side. We sat there and watched the fight, with no conversation other than comments on the fighters. Everyone but me got up and peed between rounds, so it was a lot of traffic and no conversation to amount to anything. There was a knockout in the next round, though. Dalton turned the TV off and we all just sat there nursing our beers for a couple of minutes.

  I had the drift of it. Misery loves company, everyone seems to think, so Dalton's buddies had come over to cheer him up. But misery is also contagious and I think the thing was working in that direction. It was a very sober group, beers notwithstanding.

  Finally one of the other cops—John or Sam, I don't know—looked at me and said, "You saw it, eh?"

  I said, "Yeah. Big as life. Damnedest thing I ever saw."

  "Did you file a report?" the other buddy asked.

  I said, "You kidding? Look at the way they're treating Grover. Who needs that?"

  Dalton shot me an oblique gaze and quietly asked, "How'd you know where I live?"

  I said, "I tracked you from the hospital."

  He said, "Okay, I gotcha. What the hell is this? Are you a doctor or not?"

  I said, "Not. Right now I'm a UFO investigator. I take

  you for a very bright young cop and I know your story is true because I picked up the woman."

  There followed a very long silence.

  All eyes were on me.

  John or Sam, whichever, broke the silence to ask me, "Exactly what is a UFO investigator?"

  I replied, "If you're asking for credentials, forget it, I don't have any." I placed a business card on the coffee table. "I'm a private contractor. Right now, I am my only client. Look, I saw the saucer and I found the woman up above Pepperdine. She was blown clear out of her mind and knows nothing about what happened up there."

  All three men were checking out my card, though none touched it.

  I went on: "I'm just trying to put the thing together for my own satisfaction. I am not filing any useless reports or talking to any assholes in government. But I'm like Grover. I saw it and I can't forget it. So I thought maybe we could compare notes."

  Dalton picked up the card and handed it back to me. "I already told everything I know," he said quietly.

  I said, "Sure you did. But you don't see it in the papers, do you. The department will never release that report."

  He lit a cigarette and stared at me across the glowing tip. "Who's the woman?"

  "I can't tell you that."

  "Then get your ass out of here."

  I said, "It's confidential and she'll deny it. I'll deny it, too, if I'm ever asked. So it's strictly between us. The woman is Penny Laker."

  That drew a snicker, a grin, and a wide-eyed look.

  The wide eyes were on Deputy Dalton.

  I saw a truth dawning in that look, a remembrance, a recognition. "Jesus," he whispered. "I knew she was familiar, but it was all so..."

  I told him, "I chanced upon her while you were chasing the saucer. Her mind was blown, temporarily. I naturally assumed that she'd had an encounter with the saucer, maybe she'd been abducted and then set free. She fought me like crazy at first. But now I'm wondering if I had it right. I can't give you the details because I don't have any details, but it just doesn't feel right, now, that she was running from the saucer. I think she was running from something or someone else. Since you were in the area ahead of me, I thought maybe you saw something I didn't."

  "Like what?"

  "Like another vehicle, another person, anything."

  "There was a car," the cop said slowly. "Making a U- turn in the Pepperdine drive. Fancy. Like a Rolls."

  I let out my breath and asked, "Or a Bentley?”

  Dalton flashed his eyes at me and replied, "Could be, yeah."

  I said, "Thanks," and handed my card back to him.

  He took it, dropped it in his shirt pocket, asked me, "Does Miss Laker drive a Bentley?"

  I told him, "I understand that Miss Laker doesn't drive, period. But there's a Bentley in the family."

  He said, "I see."

  I said, "Well don't go looking for it. It's in Argentina."

  "What does that mean?"

  "I'm not sure I know what it means," I lied. "It was parked in front of my house a short while before your incident. I live in Malibu, on the beach. Miss Laker's husband came to see me about a personal problem. The last I saw of that Bentley it was headed south on Pacific Coast Highway and a saucer was following it."

  I had the full attention of the house, now. Whatever else, these guys were cops and their cop instincts were at full extension. John or Sam quietly asked, The same saucer?"

  "It was the only saucer I saw that night," I replied, not yet ready to spill all of my guts. "I didn't see Graver's saucer—I mean, not in the same area. But his saucer sounds exactly like my saucer."

  "Twelve to fifteen feet in diameter," Dalton said quietly.

  "I called it at twelve feet," I told him. "That's a ballpark guess."

  "Same ballpark," he said, smiling at me for the first time.

  "Same ball, probably," I replied, smiling back.

  "What was that bit about Argentina?"

  "Miss Laker's husband is also her business manager. His name is Ted Bransen. We're not exactly friends because I'm more choosy than that but I've known him for several years. His wife, too. I told you that Bransen came to my house that night on a business matter, something to do with his wife. He wanted me to counsel her, some career matter. I agreed to discuss the problem with him over lunch the next day. Instead he called me from Buenos Aires in a panic. Claims he started off for his office that morning and found himself in Buenos Aires eight hours later, still in his Bentley and with no memory of those eight hours."

  The cops exchanged looks with each other. I got up and went to the door. Dalton came over and shook my hand. Thanks for the information, Mr. Ford," he said soberly.

  I shrugged and replied, "For what it's worth, sure. Thanks for yours."

  "For what it's worth," he said with a grim smile. It was worth a hell of a lot to me. I just needed to decide, now, what it all meant. And maybe I needed to reach that decision before I reached LAX.

  Chapter Twenty-six: Mission Possible

  The flight was right on time and Bransen was one of the first passengers off. Things were sort of quiet at LAX that time of night so I had not been worried about missing him. Just the same, I was glad to see him coming off the ramp and I was positioned to snare him as soon as he stepped into the terminal.

  I put an arm on the guy before he actually saw me, and it really startled him. I could see the whites of his eyes as they rolled toward me and he gave a little involuntary gasp and stiffened as though to pull away from my grasp, but he recovered quickly in recognition and tried to laugh it away but it was more like a dry rattle in a throat constricted by terror, not humor.

  I pulled him out of the str
eam of traffic and directed him toward the escalator as I told him how I'd volunteered to make the pickup, but the guy was damned near a basket case. He didn't even inquire about Penny and apparently had no interest in local happenings during his absence. He had no baggage so we went straight across to the parking garage and we were on our way and moving in thin traffic just minutes later.

  Only then did Bransen seem to relax a little and make a stab at conversation. "Thanks for, uh, your help down there."

  I said, "Sure."

  "I could have been tied up for days trying to straighten that mess out by myself."

  I grinned at him and told him, "Just be glad you're not locked up."

  "Right," he said, "or in a straitjacket. So I owe you. Remember that when you're making out your bill."

  "There's no bill, Ted," I replied. "But I would like to know what the hell is going on."

  "Tell me about it," he growled.

  "Well let's tell each other," I suggested.

  "I already told you all I know about this craziness. I guess you're the expert, so maybe you better tell me."

  I said, "Okay. I think you're maybe married to an alien."

  "What do you mean?'

  "I don't mean a European immigrant, pal."

  "Well that's crazy."

  "Sure it's crazy, but it's a crazy time. I'll give you some more crazy. A flying saucer followed you away from my house the other night. A little while later I think I was directed into the hills above Pepperdine where I discovered your wife staggering naked along the highway. At that same time, a sheriff's deputy was chasing a low-flying saucer through the canyon. What do you make of that?"

  Bransen's eyes were getting a bit wild again but I could also feel the defenses rising as he replied, "Do a treatment on that and I'll sell it to Spielberg. What do you mean you were directed?"

  “Telepathically."

  "Uh-huh. I thought that's what you meant. Look, I don't buy that stuff, Ford."

  "But you do buy your wife wandering a lonely highway in the middle of the night, naked and defenseless."

  "I don't get you."

  "I got you, though, pal. You weren't surprised to hear about that because you already knew about it. So tell me: why did you drug your wife and turn her out of your car up there in the wilds?"

  "You're out of your goddamn mind! What is this? Stop the goddamn car! I'm not going to ride with a maniac!"

  I ignored all that. "And what were you setting me up for?—an alibi in advance?—the poor worried husband consulting a psychic quack as the only route to his wife's dementia?"

  "Look who's talking about setups! Your Mission Impossible stunt was damned neat, Ford, damned near had me convinced!"

  I told him, "You've been too close to the business too long, Ted. All of life is just another hackneyed script to you, isn't it, embellished with special effects and razzle- dazzle. Well you've run into a real one now, my friend, and you're fucking around with some real power. You'll know what I mean when you get home and find the new swimming pool and a pod of dolphins in your backyard."

  He yelled, "Stop the goddamn car!"

  "You don't really want me to do that," I replied mildly,

  but I pulled to the curb anyway. We had reached that section of Century Boulevard just short of the freeway, where the airport hotels were clustered, and I knew what the guy was thinking; it was a good spot to bail out.

  Or so he thought.

  He opened the door and put one leg outside then froze, looked into the sky directly above the car, pulled his leg back inside, and gently closed the door.

  "Let's go," he muttered.

  “You sure?”

  "Let's go, let's go."

  So we went on.

  With a twelve-foot saucer tracking us from about two hundred feet up.

  The guy was already at the breaking point. It took very little persuasion to move him on into total surrender and docile cooperation. I feel that he came entirely clean with me, if you discount the normal and even understandable residual of self-serving alibis and rationalizations, which are entirely transparent anyway.

  And it was a hackneyed script, yeah—the ancient human story retold through all the ages, revolving on greed and selfishness and the lust for survival in a competitive world.

  "Look, I worked for that money, too. I mean I humbled myself and humiliated myself and kissed every ass in town to get her the very best deal every time. She didn't care. She never cared about any of it. The money meant nothing to her. She gave it away faster than I could claw it together for her. Well, hey, it's a community-property state—right? We file joint returns—right? Half of it was mine, and I was just trying to protect what was mine."

  I said, "Sure."

  "Right."

  He leaned forward to peer up through the top of the windshield, flinched, and quickly withdrew with his head pressed against the backrest. "Anyway I started writing the contracts with deferred payments. We have about ten mil outstanding now. I was trying to protect it for her too, Ford. I figured someday she'll come to her senses and realize the value of a dollar. I didn't want her to be broke when that happened."

  "'Course not."

  "Right. Look, I knew she was not responsible. But it can be tricky as hell trying to convince a judge that it's true. I didn't want to hurt her."

  "No way."

  "No way is right. I was just trying to protect her, in her own interests, in both our interests. Isn't that a husband's obligation?"

  "Sure it is."

  "That's the way I saw it."

  "So you just did a script for her."

  "Right. That's the way to look at it. She's so damned dingy, Ford. I just needed to document it."

  "Well...and maybe set the stage a little. A few props."

  "Props, right. You have to have evidence when you go to the judge."

  "Even if you have to manufacture some."

  "Right, in her best interests."

  "Uh-huh. So when you took her up into the Malibu hills...”

  "Well it was just...I mean, it was a setup, sure, but I didn't see that I was endangering her. I mean, the college was right there. I figured she'd wander in there and some kids would find her and..."

  "But you didn't stick around to make sure it turned out that way. You didn't figure her to stagger along the road, instead, and try to flag down passing cars stark naked."

  "'Course not."

  "And you couldn't be expected to know about her alien past, so how could you know how the drug would affect her?"

  "That's right."

  "You couldn't know that she would run from her own guardians."

  "Did she?"

  "I think so. It's the only logic I can draw. Whatever you gave her, it really screwed her up."

  "It was just a little acid."

  "You never know what that stuff will do. Even on a human."

  He shivered. "Well she is human."

  I said, "Maybe not."

  "I know damn well she's human, Shared her bed for years. Don't tell me she's not human."

  I shrugged. "Well, mammalian at least."

  "What are these things? What are they doing here? What do they want?"

  "The saucers?"

  He peered into the sky again. "Yeah."

  I told him, "I don't know what the hell they are, Ted. I don't know why they're here and I don't know what they want. But they are here. So it must be for something important. And you can bet your ass they'll get whatever it is they want."

  "I keep thinking I'll wake up," Bransen replied weakly.

  "I guess that's what everybody thinks," I said. Sure. I suppose I kept expecting to wake up any minute, myself. But even my dreams knew better.

  Chapter Twenty-seven: Night of the Dolphin

  In any other context, Ted Bransen's vicious little crimes against his wife would have warranted a story all their own. In the context given, they are hardly worthy of a footnote—because this is not a story of petty human greed and treachery but one
of truly cosmic significance.

  I do believe, you see, that these beings in their marvelous flying machines are our gods and angels of all the world's myths and legends and holy scripts. They have left their imprints and their promises on every genetic tracing upon the planet earth, within every culture and society and race of man, and they are part of us today as always in the past—because they are us in their roots and we are them in our destiny.

  I mentioned earlier the technological advances possible in a mere two hundred years of steady progress. Consider then if you will that these beings were intergalactic travelers when the first man appeared upon the earth, perhaps a million years ago. Virtually the entire story of mankind thus far has been concerned with the need to dominate his environment; only when that was largely achieved could this upstart species begin to reach beyond its own immediate needs, and only in the present century has that reach become directed toward other worlds.

  The human race has not yet been born into cosmos.

  We have become impregnated with the idea and the possibility, yes, but our position in a cosmic society is still that of a remote aboriginal tribe buried in its own ignorance, frightened and suspicious of the missionaries who come from other worlds to encourage us in our reach. Our medicine men and shamans jealously guard their own puny power and hurt their superstitions into our midst whenever the missionaries are sighted, ridiculing and tarring and banishing all who would notice them. But the missionaries do keep coming, and the impressions continue to be made, and mankind does keep inching toward that launch into the cosmic community.