“Mind if we move this along?” I ask with my best awkward smile. “Been a long drive, and if she falls asleep in the car, I might need your help carrying her inside.”
The man plucks a key card up and slaps it on the counter. “No offense to your mom, but I ain’t picking up no old ladies tonight.”
“Sure as shit don’t blame you,” I say, swiping the card up. “What’s the damage?”
“Hundred for both nights.”
I put a hundred dollar bill on the counter and slide it over. Squinty-eyed fart face picks the bill up. Holds it to the light. “Three C-notes in thirty minutes. What are the odds?”
“Beats the hell outta me,” I say, opening the door, which chimes when I exit. The man’s voice chases me back out into the clear night. “Enjoy your stay.”
Relax, I tell myself. Just stay calm. And for a moment, I manage it.
Then I reach the car and find Wini missing.
“Wini?” I spin around, searching for her. “Wini!”
“Here,” she says, her voice coming from the parking lot’s far side, just around the side of the building. “Come see. Quick!”
My feet crunch over a parking lot in need of a fresh coat of tar. By the time I cross the fifty feet, the day’s exhaustion has settled on my shoulders once more. I nearly bump into Wini when I round the corner. “Wini, what—”
Her hand grasps my cheek, tight enough to hurt. Then she shoves my head up, turning my eyes to the sky, and obliterates the weariness from my body, mind, and soul. In an instant, I’m more awake than I ever remember being. And yet, I’m reduced to a state of stupefaction.
I manage a simple question. “What is it?”
To which, Wini gives an obvious answer. “I’m not an expert, but I’m gonna guess a UFO.”
10
A triangle of lights in the sky might not normally fuse my feet to the ground and drop my jaw with the comical width and height of a Sesame Street puppet, but it’s more than just lights. Where there should be stars between the white spheres, there is only darkness.
Think, I tell myself. Use Logic. Figure it out.
What is triangular, dark, and flies? There’s only one answer to that riddle: a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. The billion dollar airplanes are big. Somewhere around a hundred and seventy feet across. I try to see the object in the sky as a B-2, but the theory falls apart.
The triangle meanders through the sky, spinning slowly. The B-2 would plummet to the ground, and they most definitely can’t rotate.
But this thing is lit. Like a conventional aircraft.
Or not. The three lights at the triangle’s points are steady and white. There’re no red flashing lights warning other aircraft of its presence. I get the sense that the lights have more to do with propulsion than they do with safety. And then it proves me wrong. All three lights blink out. For a moment, I think it’s gone, but then I note the triangle of sky is still devoid of stars.
I focus on my hearing, listening for the telltale signs of something flying. Unless the craft sounds like buzzing insects, it’s silent.
A star winks to life on the triangle’s left side. Then another.
It’s moving.
Southeast.
I try to calculate the size and distance, but there’s not enough to go on. The shape merges with the silhouette of a tall bluff I hadn’t noticed in the dark. Stars twinkle to life, marking the object’s stealthy passage, and then, nothing. It slips from view like a moray eel backing into its den, calm and unconcerned, and yet full of sinister portent.
I watch the empty sky, the luminous stars now unobstructed, for a full minute. Then I turn to Wini, who is still transfixed.
“What time is it?” she asks.
I reach for my phone and have a moment of panic when I feel the empty pocket. Then I remember the device’s fate and simply feel frustrated. “Why?”
“Want to be sure we weren’t abducted.”
“We weren’t,” I assure her.
“Wouldn’t know if you were,” she says.
“The stars haven’t moved,” I tell her, motioning to the Big Dipper overhead. I hadn’t actually looked at the stars, or noted the Dipper’s position, but if a white lie will ground us in the realm of plausibility, then I can live with it.
“Mmm,” she says, maybe agreeing, or possibly seeing through the lie.
“We should tell the others,” she says.
I shake my head. “We don’t know what we saw.”
She looks at me like I’ve just pooped out a pterodactyl. “That’s pretty much the meaning of ‘unidentified.’”
“I’m not going to tell them we saw aliens flying—”
“Unidentified.”
“Is that what Lindo will think?” I’ve never taken the UFO phenomenon seriously. The people involved with their ‘study’ most often seem like crackpots who like to point out how they’re suffering ridicule because of the subject matter, all the while becoming rock stars for true believers. Most appear at UFO conventions. Some get book deals. The lucky ones get movie deals.
It’s harsh, I know, to call these people charlatans and liars. Most of them seem to be struggling—emotionally, physically, financially—when they are taken and returned with a story that defies both explanation and belief. But logic is unaffected by empathy. It’s a key component to my job as an investigator, and even more so when I was a detective. The truth is what matters, not the sob story distracting from it. And one truth about humanity that is universal and unfaltering is that people lie.
All the time.
Most people lie the way I just did to Wini. White lies prevent pain, and conflict, and whether they’re used selfishly or not, they don’t have a lasting effect on the world. But then there are people who have perfected the art of spinning falsehoods, and not all of them are sociopaths, though that certainly helps.
I once caught a man in the act of cheating on his wife. He claimed, in all seriousness, to be learning an ancient Chinese form of internal massage. Said that he was learning it to help his marriage. The yurt, incense, candles, copious amounts of oil, and Buddha statues lent credence to the lie, but the fictional word he concocted for the mystical technique—and which I recorded on my phone—‘cào nǐ mā’ translates to ‘fuck your mother,’ which was a pretty accurate description of what was happening.
I landed that case three months after starting the PI business. Wini, who was new at the time, called it our Jerry Springer case. In the years since, we’ve had more than a hundred Springer cases, all dealing with creative lies by normal people. But then there are the abnormal people, who make careers out of lying. Actors entertain us by pretending to be other people. Celebrities pretend to be healthier or better looking than other people, utilizing makeup and Photoshop. Politicians…well, that doesn’t even need explaining. Lying is a tool employed by everyone on the planet, and people who tell stories of alien abductions, liquid chairs, and anal probes are just that: liars.
Like everyone else.
Their lies are just easier to see through—unless you don’t want to.
At the same time, I acknowledge that I’ve just seen something beyond explanation. If it had been Lindo and Young out here instead of Wini and me, I wouldn’t believe their story in the morning. Which is another reason we can keep this to ourselves. I’m not going to sully my credibility by telling stories that make no sense.
Lies serve a purpose.
That big triangle in the sky, visible for all to see, serves a purpose.
And it’s the same purpose all lies serve—to conceal the truth.
When a large number of people go missing in a certain area, which happens to be the same area where Isabella was last seen, the presence of a very visible UFO could come in handy. I have zero theories on how it was done, but I intend to find out.
“Until it is,” I say.
“Until it is what?” she asks. “You drifted off there for a minute.”
“Identified.”
“And wh
o’s going to do that?”
“We are….” I raise a finger. “…if it turns out to be connected to Isabella’s disappearance. Other than interviewing people in town, which we’re going to do as well—” I redirect my finger toward the dark bluff. “—that thing, which is traditionally associated with missing people, is our only lead. So we’re going to follow—”
The sky beyond the bluff flashes orange with silent heat lightning. Each flash carves the bluff’s outline into my retina.
The light show transfixes me once more. If this is a lie, it is expensive and elaborate. Far too much to be misdirecting whoever might be watching from the disappearance of a little girl. Then again, I would have said the same about mercenaries in a black helicopter, too.
The lights flicker one last time and then stop. The night feels heavy and foreboding, like it did on Halloween when I was a kid.
“We’ve stepped in something big,” I say to myself, forgetting that Wini is with me.
“And smelly,” she says. “What’s the plan?”
“We’ll head out there in the morning,” I say, eyes on the flashing bluff. “See what there is to see.”
“And the others?” she motions to the motel behind us.
“They’ll come with.”
“You don’t trust them,” she says. It’s not a question.
“I trust you.”
“Trust no one,” she says. “Is that it? You’re a regular Fox Mulder.”
“Does that make you my Scully?”
She smiles and elbows me. “Thought you didn’t like science fiction?”
“Kailyn loved the show,” I say, touching the envelope in my pocket. “You’d have liked her.”
“That’s been a long-established fact.” Wini leans her head on my arm. “FYI, the day has passed.”
Wini has watched me struggle on this day for the past five years. In comparison, looking for a missing girl, being attacked by mercs, driving seven hundred miles, and witnessing the impossible, is a good day. I feel pretty good. And now, knowing it is past, the weight is lifted. I lean my head on hers. “You want to buy some clothes in the morning?”
“Please, God, yes.” She tugs at the skirt she’s been regretting wearing all day. We turn together and head toward the motel’s corner. “And just so you know, I’m sleeping in my skivvies tonight. You’re bound to get an eyeful.”
“I’ll try to keep my hands to myself.”
We round the corner, arms around each other, as close as family ever could be, and are stumbled to a stop by the wide-eyed gaze of the motel’s chubby clerk.
“Said she was your mother,” the man states, somehow managing to frown while his mouth is open. Out of context, I understand how our conversation could lead to incorrect assumptions.
I’m about to explain when Wini says, “Hey, when in Colorado City, right?”
The man’s blank stare says he’s perhaps unaware of the city’s reputation, and of the original, ‘when in Rome,’ source material. But then he shrugs and says, “S’pose so.”
Wini and I scurry to the motel room, let ourselves in and collapse into the spring-loaded twin beds, wracked with laughter until we both pass out.
I wake up the following morning feeling more like my old self than I have for exactly five years and one day. That is, until I sit up and find the door wide open—and Wini missing.
11
“Wini?” Blankets explode away from me as I launch for the door. Fists clenched, I step into the morning sun and the day’s already dry heat. Fear conjures images of Wini being forced into a van, or dead on the pavement, her killer just waiting for me to emerge.
What I find is a mostly empty parking lot. I look right. The Charger is still there, but it’s parked two spaces further to the right. I turn left, and am greeted by a woman in tight skinny jeans, a poufy shirt that assails my eyes with a bright flower print, and insect-eye-like sunglasses. She leans on a cart covered in fresh towels and cleaning supplies, takes a drag from her cigarette, lowers her sunglasses, and gives me a blatant up-and-down stare that’s downright hungry.
Twin geysers of smoke stream from her nostrils. “Aren’t you just a bowl of peaches.”
While I have never heard the expression before, and suspect she’s just made it up, I know exactly what she’s trying to communicate.
I glance down, remembering that I’m dressed in boxer briefs. Concern for Wini overcomes my embarrassment. “Have you seen an older woman—”
“You’re into older women?” She grins, and for the first time I notice the wrinkles lining her tan skin. Her age is hard to peg. She could be in her late sixties, or early fifties and spent too much time in the sun. Either way, she’s got a decade or two on me.
“I’m looking for my mother.”
She ponders this for a moment. “Saw an older gal go into one of those rooms.” She nods down the line of rooms. “The one with the open door.”
Near the end of the building, Young’s door hangs open just like mine.
“Was with a good looking black fella, though, so you might wanna wait before you go knocking. Seemed like they were in a rush, too. In the meantime, I haven’t cleaned this room yet. Nobody’s going to mind if we mess it up a little more.”
Though my thoughts are something closer to ‘it will be a cold day in Beelzebub’s BBQ grill before that happens,’ I’ve learned that ingratiating people, even those who repulse you, often greases an investigation’s wheels. While I doubt the woman knows anything about my case, she’s a local—who else would work here—and her knowledge of the area could come in handy. So I smile and say, “Maybe next time.”
She gives me a wink. “Next time.”
I retreat back into my room and close the door behind me. I look to the floor, searching for the clothing I shed in the middle of the night when the air conditioning stopped working. I don’t see the clothes, but I do spot the clock. It’s 10am.
Before I can react to the time, I spot a bright yellow bag lying on the room’s small desk. The beacon leads me to a neatly stacked pile of clothing. I riffle through the garments and find a pair of jeans, tan cargo shorts, a white T-shirt and a nice, white button-up. Given the heat already beating down, I opt for the shorts and T-shirt. I would normally wear pants and a nice shirt while on the job, regardless of the weather, but I don’t want to stand out. Better to look like a tourist.
The shorts fit just right, no doubt thanks to Wini. I pick up the T-shirt and freeze. Hidden beneath the shirt is the silenced Beretta M9. Resting on the desk beside it is a box of 9mm ammo. I pick up the weapon. The weight of it tells me it’s already loaded, but I eject the magazine anyway. After confirming a full load, I rack the slide to make sure there isn’t a round in the chamber. It’s clean.
Wini was busy this morning. After hearing that Wini was seen with Young, and finding the clothing and ammo, I feel a little bit less worried about her. If she bought ammo for me, she’d have bought it for herself and for Young as well, and even though that’s a lot of bullets, no one’s going to question little ol’ Wini. I unscrew the sound suppressor and slip it in my cargo shorts pocket. The naked Beretta goes in the small of my back. I throw the T-shirt on and head for the door.
The door swings open just before I reach it. The silhouette of a man rushes inside and is greeted by my quick-drawn handgun. It’s been a while since I had to draw down on someone. I’m happy to see I’m still pretty quick. Far more happy than Lindo, who’s staring down the barrel of my gun, arms raised.
“Yooo, man! It’s me.” When I don’t pull the trigger, Lindo lowers his hands. “Damn, Skippy, you nearly capped my ass.”
“Lucky I didn’t.” I tuck the weapon back into my shorts. “Where’s Wini?”
“Sent me to get you. You won’t believe the shit that’s on TV!” Rather than walking to Young’s room, I pick up the remote and turn on the aging television, which is already tuned to a local channel. A reporter in a bright red power suit that’s nearly as hard on the eyes as the de
luge of news graphics announcing a breaking story, sits behind a desk. She’s feeling smug and amused with the report already in progress. “Once again, this was the scene in Colorado City last night.”
A framed video of the night sky is displayed. Three bright lights inch across the sky. The video is hazy, from several miles away, and accompanied by a diatribe from what sounds like that double rainbow guy, but with a bottle of Jack in him. The video is captioned with: Aliens Visit AZ? Again?! When the lights slide behind the dark bluff, the video cuts away.
The reporter returns, smile widening. The video replays beside her. “Reports of the visitation came in just after midnight, with residents claiming to have spotted the otherworldly lights hovering to the southeast of town. Listen to this eyewitness describe it.”
“You see, man?” Lindo says. “Thirty-seventh parallel. I told you.”
A voice that can only belong to a chain smoking woman booms from the TV, the recording marred by static, snaps, and pops. “I saw it in the sky. Watched it for, God, I don’t know, an hour. Was spinning. Doing flips. Slipped out of sight there at the end, but then poof! There was this big flash of white light and it shot up into the sky quicker than I could say ho-lee sh-eeeep. Watched it bounce around in the sky for a bit, putting on a right good show. Lost track of it after that.”
“That’s not what happened,” I mumble.
“Wait, what?”
Damn. I forgot Lindo wasn’t with me. “Nothing.”
“Yo, did you see that shit? Are you serious?” Lindo steps back, moving his arms in a way I’m not sure how to describe. It’s almost like he’s on stage, talking to an audience. “How’d it go down?”
There’s no point in lying. I turn off the TV and say, “Not like that, and not where they say. Is Wini with you?”
“She’s with the preach.”
I notice he’s wearing new clothes.
“You went shopping?” I ask.
“We all did, man. Where do you think your new digs came from?”
“Right…” Wini going shopping isn’t a big deal, but an old white woman in a store with two men of darker skin tones might raise a few eyebrows.
The Others Page 7
