Alien Crimes

by Mike Resnick (ed)

  “If you were, you’d be dumb to stay,” deep voice said. “Besides,” said another voice, “we seen you hurt. You don’t change like those demons do.”

  “I suppose,” Jess Taylor said in that low tone again.

  “You don’t approve,” said the other voice.

  “Of what?” Jess Taylor asked, louder this time.

  “What we done.”

  For a long moment, Jess Taylor didn’t answer. She held her breath, hoping he wouldn’t make a mistake. If he made a mistake, they would find her.

  Finally, he said, “I don’t know what you did.”

  “We could show you,” one of the men said, and everyone laughed.

  “Thank you,” Jess Taylor said without any warmth, “but I think I can figure it out for myself.”

  NOW

  The front door of the hotel was padlocked. The window shutters were closed and locked as well. When she was a child, this looked like an abandoned building, spooky but still alive. Now it seemed like an unloved place, a place that would fall apart if someone took the locks off.

  Becca watched Chase remove the padlock and hook it onto his belt. Then he swung back the metal latch and pushed open the double mahogany doors.

  Those Becca remembered. She remembered the way the light filtered out through them, more dust motes than she thought possible dancing inside of it.

  Small windows stood beside the door, but on the far side of the lobby, floor-to-ceiling windows opened onto the expanse of high desert and the mountains beyond. The glass was old and bubbled and clearly handmade. Such dramatic windows were rare a hundred years ago, and had been—in the hotel’s heyday— one of its main drawing points.

  She stepped inside, sneezed at the smells of mold and dust, and watched as more motes swirled because of her movements. Chase stood beside the door, watching her.

  “We were going to revive it all,” he said. The past tense saddened her. “Imagine that desk over there, polished, with employees behind it, computers on top, guests in front.”

  She looked at the registration desk, scratched and filthy, which wrapped around an entire corner of the room. Behind it were old-fashioned mail slots, some filled with stuffing from chairs—probably rat or mouse nests.

  “People would look at the view, or go to the natatorium for tennis or a swim. We were going to build a golf course alongside this, and build homes, just outside the line of sight of these windows.” Chase stuck his hands in his back pockets. He stared at the view, still sending in light despite the dirty glass. “It would have been spectacular.”

  “It’s not over yet, Chase,” Becca said. It wasn’t like him to give up so easily. In fact, this speech of his was making her suspicious. Had he run into financial difficulty? Had he put something recently dead among the bones as a way of notifying the authorities? Did he want the project to end for a reason she didn’t understand yet?

  “Half my crew probably ran away today.”

  “They aren’t the people who will restore this building.” “Who’s going to come once they find out there’s a mass grave on the property?”

  She didn’t know the answer to that. “People go to battlefields all the time.”

  “Battlefields,” he said, “are different.”

  “We went to Little Big Horn. They’re still discovering bodies up there.”

  “From a hundred and forty years ago,” he said.

  “You have no idea how old these bodies are,” she said.

  He shrugged, then turned and gave her one of his aw-what- the-hell smiles. “You’re right. I don’t know anything yet. Except that this place was well named.”

  The End of the World. She sighed, and asked the question she’d suddenly started to dread. “Are you insured?”

  “For what? Construction losses? Sure. Lost income and disability? Sure. Dead bodies on my construction site? Who the hell knows?”

  “Maybe you should find out,” she said. “I’m sure this doesn’t qualify as an act of God.”

  He inclined his head toward her, as if to say “Touché.”

  “I need to look,” she said. “Alone.”

  He nodded, then walked to the door. “Find me when you’re done.”

  “Yeah,” she said, but he had already stepped outside. She sighed and looked at the floor. Dirt covered the old carpet. Footprints ran through it, some of them so old that they were buried under layers of sand. Broken chairs huddled in the corner, and the stairs to the second floor had rotted away.

  But the hotel did have good bones. The brick on the outside had insulated it from harsh weather in the high desert—the hot, hot summers and the blisteringly cold winters. Even the floor-to- ceiling windows were double paned, something so unusual, she’d never seen it in a building this old.

  The place didn’t smell of death like the natatorium. In fact, except for her prints and Chase’s, it didn’t look like anyone had been here in a month or more.

  She turned on her flashlight and aimed it at the dark corners. Something skittered away from the ornate gold leaf in front of the elevator. She scanned the steps—yep, rotted—and the scarred reception desk. A door was open behind it, leading to the offices. She’d been back there when she was a kid.

  In fact, she’d been everywhere in this place as a child. The whole hotel had fascinated her, except for one part.

  She steeled herself, then moved to the right, aiming the light at the far wall. When the beam hit it, the wallpaper shimmered like a heat mirage.

  She swallowed. That, at least, hadn’t changed. The shimmering wall and the building moans—probably from the way the wind whistled through it on dry desert days—gave rise to the stories of the hotel being haunted.

  A shiver ran through her. She’d just seen a hole filled with long-dead bodies, her nose still carried the odor of decay (and her clothing probably did, too), and it was the old hotel that scared her out of her wits.

  Let someone else investigate it. Let the crime scene techs make sure nothing bad had happened here in the recent past. She’d done as much as she was going to.

  She shut off her light, and tried not to listen to the rustling as she let herself out.

  THEN

  After a long long time, most of the voices stopped. A few continued. Deep Voice did. He gave orders and talked to some of the others.

  Then he told Jess Taylor to leave.

  She held her breath, wondering what would happen to her.

  Then someone picked up the box. She bumped against the side.

  “What’ve you got there?” Deep Voice asked.

  “Just a box,” Jess Taylor said. “I need to move a few things from my house. I thought I’d take this to pack them in. I’ll bring it back in the morning.”

  “Check it, Dunnigan,” Deep Voice said.

  She shivered. She couldn’t help herself. She squinched as far as she could into the corner of the box, turned her ear inward, and closed her remaining eye, hoping this Dunnigan couldn’t see her—or if he did, he wouldn’t know what he was looking at.

  The box bounced, then the light changed. The towel must have come off. Tobacco and sweat filled the air. She held herself rigid, feeling a shiver start, and willing it away.

  “It’s empty, boss,” said this Dunnigan, right above her.

  The box bumped again, and the light dimmed.

  “Satisfied?” Jess Taylor asked. His tone was bitter.

  “You got to admit,” Deep Voice said, “you’ve been acting odd today.”

  “I acted like a responsible employee,” Jess Taylor said. “I stayed when everyone else left. No one thought to lock up in all the excitement. I made sure the drawers were closed and locked, the safe was closed, and the account registers were in the proper desks. I kept an eye on the place, and you treat me like a criminal.”

  “You’d do the same, Taylor;’’ Deep Voice said.

  “No, sir, I beg your pardon, but I wouldn’t. I would acknowledge when an employee does well, not suspect him of thievery becaus
e he takes an initiative.”

  The silence went on forever. She was still holding her breath. She had to let it out, as quietly as she could. She could feel the box bounce with Jess Taylor’s breathing—if he was the one holding it. She hoped he was.

  He seemed like the only human—the only person—she could trust.

  Finally, Deep Voice said, “You can keep the box.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Such sarcasm in Jess Taylor’s voice. She wondered if Deep Voice could hear it. “May I go now?”

  “Of course,” Deep Voice said.

  The box bounced with each step. She heard a door screech open, then bang closed. The air grew warmer and the towel blew up ever so slightly.

  “Stay still,” Jess Taylor said in that undertone of his. “We’re not out of this yet.”

  NOW

  When she came out of the hotel, the sky was a deep grayish blue. Twilight had fallen fast, like it always did on the high desert. The moment the sun dipped behind the mountain peaks, the light changed and the air had a suggestion of coolness.

  Now if only the wind would stop. It rose for a half hour or so at real twilight, sending sand pellets against her skin like tiny knives.

  Chase’s employees had already left. So had the police, except for two officers who had been assigned to guard the crime scene. Apparently the crime scene techs weren’t going to work at night, which made sense, given the location and the questions still lingering about how to handle the scene.

  Chase leaned against his Ford Bronco, a cell phone pressed against his ear. His back was to her, but she could tell from the position of his shoulders how annoyed he was.

  She walked toward him, then stopped when she heard what he was saying.

  "... I’m not sure what they’re going to find here, Lester, but that’s not the point. The point is that this project probably won’t go forward for months. I need you to check our liability. I also need you to examine the insurance policies, and to somehow, without tipping our hand, talk to the few investors who came on board early. I’d promised them the chance of a return within two years. This project came alive because I thought we could fast-track it.”

  He was talking to his lawyer. Usually such conversations had lawyer-client privilege, but she wasn’t sure about that when he conducted it outside on a cell phone.

  Still, she should let him know she was there.

  She didn’t move.

  “That’s not the point, Lester. The point is that I already have one point two million dollars in capital tied up in this place, and now everything’s going to be on hold—”

  One of the officers saw her. She nodded at him.

  “That’s why I want you to find out if we’re insured for something like this. I’m not sure I can afford to have that much money tied up indefinitely.”

  She scraped her foot against the dirt as she walked forward again. He continued talking, so she coughed.

  He turned, paused, and sighed. Then he said, “Listen, I’ll call you in a few hours. Have some answers for me by then, will you?”

  “How’s Lester?” she asked.

  “You heard that?”

  “Enough to know who you were talking to.” Lester had handled their divorce. He had been Chase’s lawyer for more than two decades. She had no idea if he was any good, but Chase obviously had no complaints. He usually fired people who didn’t perform their jobs well.

  Chase stuck his phone into the front pocket of his shirt. Then he took the padlock off his belt. “I suppose this is the wrong time to ask you to dinner.”

  “It’s always the wrong time, Chase,” she said.

  He shook his head ever so slightly. “What did I do, Becca? Was being married to me that bad?”

  “I divorced you,” she said. “That should be answer enough.” But it wasn’t, because he asked her often. And he made it sound like she had been crazy to leave him. Which, her therapist said, was proof enough to her that she had done the right thing.

  Becca waited until he’d padlocked the hotel before she walked to her squad. Even then, she stood with an arm resting on the open door as he walked back to his Bronco.

  He looked defeated. Was Chase a good enough actor to play such a difficult emotion? She wasn’t sure, but she doubted it. And Jillian would say that she doubted it because she wanted to. “Changed my mind,” Becca said when he got close. “How’s pizza sound to you?”

  “Good if they had the real thing here.”

  He’d gone to school in Chicago; he thought the pizza out west was too mainstream or too California. Tasteless and low-fat, he’d once said.

  She expected the response, just not the rote way he said it. “Well, how about that thing we call pizza out here in the wild, wild west?”

  He looked at her for the longest time as if he were sizing her up. She made sure her expression remained neutral.

  “You going to interrogate me?” he asked.

  “Should I?”

  “I suppose you should.” He opened the Bronco’s door. “And you should know I’m ordering spaghetti.”

  “Spoilsport,” she said, got into the squad, and followed Chase out of the lot.

  THEN

  The box bounced for what seemed like forever. She heard boots tapping on the wooden sidewalk, boots scraping on dirt, boots going silent as they hit the grass. She heard voices, conversations far from her. She heard a motorized engine, one of those newfangled automobiles that made humans think they had entered a technological age.

  Daddy had always said they were backward. If they were just a bit farther along, if the Earth hadn’t been so focused on oil and gas and coal, then maybe their people could have rebuilt the ship. But the materials hadn’t been manufactured yet, and the energy sources were too heavy or too combustible. The people needed something more sophisticated, but didn’t have the resources to make it themselves.

  Nor did they have the ability to take what passed for technology in this place and modify it for their needs.

  Occasionally one of the voices would greet Jess Taylor and ask him what he had in the box. He’d give the same reply—Nothing—and continue as if that were true.

  He walked for a long time.

  Then she heard boots on wood again, a few creaks, and the click of a doorknob. Another creak—this one different, like a door opening—and the light filtering through the towel seemed dimmer.

  Finally, Jess Taylor set the box down.

  “Just a minute,” he said.

  She heard a door close, then a swish that she recognized—curtains being closed. This place was hot. The windows should’ve been open instead of covered. The air smelled faintly of grease and unwashed sheets.

  Then the towel came off. She swiveled her eye upward. Jess Taylor was looking down at her.

  “This is my house,” he said. “I live alone, so no one’ll bother us. I don’t have to be anywhere until tomorrow.”

  She wasn’t sure why he was telling her all that.

  He scooted a chair closer to the table, sat down, then asked, “Do you have any idea what we should do next?”

  NOW

  Becca didn’t have to tell him where they were going because there was only one pizza parlor in all of Hope that he would step into. It was in a beat-up old building on the southeast side, about as far from the End of the World as they could go.

  The pizza parlor—called Reuben’s of all things—was actually owned by a displaced New York Italian who missed his grandmother’s cooking. He made pizza because teenagers loved it and because it was a cheap, easy meal for families, but his heart was in the Italian dishes, from lasagna to a special homemade sausage marinara whose recipe he kept secret.

  Chase came out of the bathroom as she went into the ladies’ room. When she came out, Chase was sitting toward the back, in a red vinyl booth, his hands folded on the checked tablecloth. The edges of his hair were wet, as was one side of his face.

  Washing up hadn’t entirely gotten rid of the smell of rot that had permeated he
r nose, but it got knocked back a degree. The rich odor of garlic and baking bread helped.

  By the time she got to the table, Chase was sipping a glass of wine. An iced tea waited for her. Irritation flooded through her— how did he know what she wanted? Had he asked? No, of course not—and then she shook it off.

  He had always done this, and until she left him, she had let him. She hadn’t told him in any way that he no longer had the right to make decisions for her, and now didn’t seem the time.

  “I ordered the family-sized spaghetti with the sausage marinara,” he said.

  She sighed. She was going to have to confront him after all.

  But he held up his hand, as if to forestall anything she had to say.

  “Then I realized I was being a jerk, so I ordered a small pep-peroni pizza and a basket of garlic bread.”

  As he said that, the garlic bread arrived, looking crisp and greasy and delicious.

  “Sorry. I know I should know better.”

  Becca wasn’t sure if that was a real apology or not. She wasn’t even sure she should be annoyed or not. Sometimes she wished her therapist was on speed-dial, so she could ask a simple question: What was the appropriate response to this particular Chase action? Should she be flattered or insulted? Should she set him in his place? Or should she do her breathing exercises while she reminded herself that they were no longer married?

  “We could, I think, change the topping on the pizza.” He actually sounded worried. “I don’t think it went into the oven yet.” “No, that’s fine,” she said. “A hundred thousand fat-filled calories actually sound good right now.”

  So she had opted onto a response, and it was passive-aggressive. Bully for her. How non-constructive.

  Chase blinked, looking a little stunned, then shrugged. “Sounds like you’re in the mood to interrogate me.”

  Becca grabbed a slice of garlic bread. The butter welled against her fingers, and she realized she was hungry.

  “How much do you stand to lose if the End of the World folds?”