“Nnnnnnope,” Antonionus said, manipulating his mouse until he was satisfied with his answer.
“And you called her back when?”
“Well,” he said, clicking again, “it’s on my to-do list for four days ago, but I’m not sure when I got around to it. What’s today? Saturday? I think I called her back Thursday. I could check my phone records.”
“That’s all right,” he said. “We could check them, too, if we needed to. I’m just mainly interested in why she might have been calling you.”
“Is she in some sort of trouble?” Antonionus asked. “You have a very disturbed aura right now.”
“We’re not sure,” DeLuca said. “We’d like to talk to her before we reach any conclusions. And I apologize for my aura.”
“We get a lot of calls, Detective. Is it Detective? We get calls from people all over the world, every day, inquiring about either our products or the Metamorphosis System. I’d say at least once a week someone shows up on our doorstep, seeking one thing or another.”
“What do you do with them,” DeLuca asked. “The people who show up?”
“Well, we try to accommodate them, if we can,” Antonionus said. “We don’t want anyone going away disappointed. Some seekers are ready and others need more preparation, so we give them a program kit to take home, and sometimes we refer them to one of our satellite campuses. That probably sounds like a pun, doesn’t it? I wish I’d thought of it. How is your marriage, Detective? My sense is that your wife wishes you’d change something. Your line of work, I think. Forgive me for intruding but when I hear things whispering in my ear, it’s hard to ignore them.”
“I appreciate your concern,” DeLuca said. “Can you think of any reason why Sergeant Escavedo might have called you on the seventeenth? Anything going on, on or around that date?”
“Not around here,” Antonionus said. “We had an Ascension ceremony on the nineteenth, but that was in Arizona.”
“Whereabouts?” DeLuca asked.
“A place called Spirit Mountain,” Antonionus said. “I’d received instructions that a ship would be using a meteor shower that night to conceal a landing. Unfortunately, in my current condition, I’m a bit aphasic at times. I think I understand things, but I don’t.”
“Did a ship in fact come that night?” DeLuca asked. He wasn’t really interested in the answer, except that Antonionus had been in proximity to the disappearance, and that meant he might have seen something. It was also more than a coincidence, and that meant something, too. Somewhere in the bullshit, there could be information DeLuca could use.
“One did, but it wasn’t Rigelian,” Antonionus said, rather matter-of-factly, as if ships arrived all the time.
“What was it?”
“I’m not sure,” Antonionus said. “They signed a trade alliance with a collective from the Sega quadrant but I wasn’t aware that it had gone into effect yet. My understanding was that they’d be stopping for hydrogen only. Do you want me to find out what kind of ship it was?”
“That won’t be necessary,” DeLuca said. “I’m sure my friends at CMAF can tell me that.”
Antonionus snickered.
“Oh, yes, I’m sure they can,” he said. “They’ll be very helpful.”
“How did you know where the Ascension was going to take place?” DeLuca asked.
“How?” Antonionus said. “How do monarch butterflies know which way is Mexico? Or more to the point, how do they know they know? I’m not trying to be deliberately elusive, Detective. There are simply things I know, but I have a harder time saying how I know them. The body you see is a shell I’ve been forced to wear. The angel inside of me is my true self, from somewhere quite different from this world. Yet the shell is what I have to work with here, to speak and to understand. A big part of its job is to interpret the wisdom of its truer self. We all have angels inside of us, Detective, yourself included. In which sense, describing freeing our angels as the next condition is a bit of a misnomer, because they are already with us. The next expression might be a better term, but, you know, too late now.”
“I guess what I’m really wondering is, how would Cheryl Escavedo have known about your Ascension?” DeLuca said. “We found her Jeep at the base of Spirit Mountain, so it makes me wonder if she was coming to join you, for whatever reason.”
“Some people are drawn to them,” Antonionus said. “People wander in all the time simply because they’ve been called. Other people might have seen our ads in the popular magazines. Ascensions are also posted on our Website. Whenever possible. I usually know months in advance, but not always. One time I recall I was given about fifteen minutes’ notice, but fortunately, we were nearby. You say you found her Jeep—I take it then that you’re unable to account for Sergeant Escavedo’s whereabouts?”
“That’s right,” DeLuca said.
“Have you taken into account the possibility that she was taken?” Antonionus asked. “I suppose for someone like you, this is still beyond the realm of possibility, but there was a ship that night. They all have the technology. Probably a third of the people here today have been abducted and most of the others know someone who was. It’s all been well documented and supported by authorities as well respected as Harvard psychology professor Hilton Jaynes. I don’t expect to change your mind here and now, Detective, but if you’re looking for someone who went missing at Spirit Mountain that night, it is the most logical explanation. Don’t they say the explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is the one most likely to be true?”
“That is what they say,” DeLuca said. “But it’s really more a question of quality than quantity. I’d rather have an explanation with ten small reasonable assumptions than one big dubious one.”
“Dubious is one of the nicer things I’ve been called,” Antonionus said, smiling again. What was with all the smiling? “Do you really think, with over a hundred thousand other planets in the cosmos, just like earth, just as inhabitable, that we’re alone in the universe?”
“Do you really think I’m going to believe a grown man who’s dressed like a cross between Santa’s helper and Pee-wee Herman didn’t just pull that number out of his ass?” DeLuca wanted to say, but he held his tongue.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’ve found a lot of missing people over the years, and of all the reasons that they’ve been missing, that’s never been one of them,” he said instead. “I try to be open to new ideas, but I can’t help but base my decisions and hunches on past experience. But if you could get the name of the ship, we’ll throw it into the system and see what happens.”
“I’d love to see how you’d do with a Good Attention program,” Antonionus said, clasping his hands together over his heart. DeLuca was still waiting for the charisma he’d heard of to kick in, but so far, all he was seeing was the same sort of bemused confidence he’d seen in a hundred other deluded morons, with a random meting out of benevolence that probably made his followers feel good about themselves. “The technology allows the player to control the images on the screen with his mind. You might think that’s dubious, too, but they’re using it in schools to help children with attention deficit disorder learn to focus. I think you’d be absolutely off the charts. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone with such a perfect blend of convergent and divergent thinking.”
“Where do you get your crystals, by the way?” DeLuca said. “I think I’d like to get one for my wife.”
“My advisers,” Antonionus said. “A variety of places, really. Some were gifts. This one spoke to me in the desert and asked me to pick it up. Her up—she doesn’t like it when I call her an ‘it.’” He put his finger on it. DeLuca half-expected it to light up.
“Do you ever buy crystals from a kid named Marvin Yutahay?” DeLuca asked. “Native American kid. Gem hunter.”
“Not to my knowledge, but then I never buy crystals, period. Others here may know about him. Would you like me to ask?”
“That’s all right,” DeLuca said.
They were interrupted by a knock on the door. God’s Miracle entered and said they were ready with their midmorning reports. DeLuca rose to leave, laying his card down on Brother Antonionus’s table.
“Thanks for the help,” he said, “and for the kind words. Time I took my divergent thinking elsewhere.”
“Miracle will see you to your car,” Antonionus said.
“Thanks, but I can find it. Do call me if you hear from Sergeant Escavedo.”
“I will,” Antonionus said. “I promise I will.”
When he got to his car, he discovered it had been washed and waxed by a young woman in the requisite red jumpsuit who was putting a few finishing strokes to polishing the hood. She looked at him, then glanced nervously over his shoulder to see if someone was behind him.
“Are you a police officer?” she asked him.
“Not exactly, but something like that,” he replied.
“Can you help me find my daughter?” the woman said, panic rising in her voice. “My name is Rainbow. My daughter’s name is Ruby. I think they have her, but I don’t know where she is. They won’t let me talk to her.”
“Who has her?” DeLuca said. “Who won’t let you talk to her?” But the woman calling herself Rainbow rushed off, fearful that her pleas had been overheard, and disappeared into the house to make her midmorning report.
Because of Posse Comitatus laws, there were strict limitations preventing military interference in matters of civilian justice—nobody wanted America resembling some South American banana republic where the army and the police were the same thing. At the same time, the Patriot Act gave law enforcement and intelligence agencies more leeway these days. DeLuca had two options, regarding the woman named Rainbow’s request. He could (and probably should) relay her plea to the local authorities and let them handle it. They were no doubt accustomed to a whole slew of wacky statements and claims coming out of the Brethren of the Light compound. He certainly didn’t have time to look into it personally, but he could assign someone to it if it took on any greater significance. If two girls had disappeared at the same time, on or around the same time and place, that was certainly significant.
He had two more stops to make, first at the Military Entry Processing Station where Escavedo had worked. It was a dead end, a nondescript beige federal building where no one had anything really helpful to contribute. Cheryl had seemed disgruntled and unhappy in her work, DeLuca learned, but then again, everybody there seemed disgruntled and unhappy in their work. She hadn’t made any close friends, and in fact seemed aloof and distant, as if she didn’t want to make any close friends. She didn’t talk to anybody, and kept to herself, mostly, did her job and went home, no overtime, no self-initiated projects—it didn’t sound like the Cheryl Escavedo DeLuca had read about in her 201 file. One coworker recalled Escavedo receiving a bouquet of flowers on Valentine’s Day, but she didn’t tell anybody whom they were from. When DeLuca called all the local florists in the Yellow Pages, none of them had any record of delivering flowers to the MEPS building on Valentine’s Day.
His last stop of the day was the apartment Cheryl Escavedo shared with Theresa Davidova, the ground floor of a two-story house with a large porch in the front and a smaller one in the back. He’d hoped to listen to the message on her answering machine and read the note Cheryl had left, the words “Tom never…” When he got there, he knocked on the front door and rang the bell, but no one was home. When he called the number Theresa had given him, it rang and rang. He wondered why the machine didn’t pick up. When he walked around the house, he saw that the back door was open a crack. When he opened it, he was suddenly startled when a cat darted past him. According to the writing on the litterbox, the cat’s name was “Boo.” There was a half-empty bowl of cereal on the table (Boo had drunk all the milk) and a box of Honey Nut Cheerios in front of it, the top open, next to a glass of orange juice, untouched. The answering machine was gone from the kitchen counter, the telephone wire and power source unplugged. The case of power bars on the kitchen counter was overturned and empty. A search of the rest of the house turned up little, though there were clothes strewn on the bed as if someone had packed very quickly.
He was in the kitchen again when a red International Harvester pickup with a black camper on the back pulled into the driveway. A young man got out, late twenties, fit-looking in jeans and work boots and an unzipped gray hooded sweatshirt over a black T-shirt, his longish black hair swept back but unruly, his beard closely trimmed. DeLuca stepped out on the porch to meet him.
“Who are you?” the young man asked, stopping in his tracks.
“David DeLuca, Army counterintelligence,” he replied, flashing his B’s and C’s. “Who are you?”
“Josh Truitt,” the young man said. “My girlfriend lives here. What are you doing here?”
“I’m looking for Cheryl,” DeLuca said. “She your girlfriend?”
“Theresa,” Josh Truitt said. “Is she here?”
“She’s not,” DeLuca said. “Were you expecting her?”
“We were supposed to have dinner,” Truitt said. “I called all day but she didn’t answer and the machine didn’t pick up.”
“Were you here earlier?” DeLuca asked.
“Just got here,” Truitt said.
“It looks either like she left in a hurry or she was expecting to be right back,” DeLuca said. “Her answering machine is missing. I’m guessing she usually doesn’t take her answering machine with her when she leaves the house.”
“We were supposed to go camping,” Truitt said. “Tomorrow morning.”
“Where were you going?”
“A canyon I know in the Gila Wilderness,” Truitt said. “Near Silver City. I was going to surprise her.”
“Does she have any friends she might have contacted?”
“I just spoke to both of them and they haven’t heard from her,” Truitt said. “Her boss from the bar and a woman from church.”
“Did she have any enemies I should know about?” DeLuca asked.
“Why?” the other man asked. “Why do you want to know?”
“I’m investigating her roommate’s disappearance,” DeLuca said. “I spoke to Theresa on the phone once, and then she called me back. We were supposed to get together. She said she was going to be around. You gave Cheryl a copy of your book.”
“For her birthday,” Truitt said.
“How long had you known Cheryl?”
“Just for a few months. Maybe six months. Since she got transferred to Albuquerque.”
“How did she meet Theresa?”
“She saw a sign at the laundromat that Theresa put up, looking for a roommate,” Truitt said. “But they really hit it off.”
“Did she have a boyfriend?” DeLuca asked.
“She had friends,” Truitt said. “I don’t know if they were boyfriends. She’d go away for weekends. Either back to Colorado Springs or to Arizona. She didn’t seem like she wanted to talk about it.”
“About boyfriends?”
“Yeah.”
“Any idea why not?” DeLuca asked.
“Not really,” Truitt said. “When someone asks you to respect their privacy, you don’t say, ‘And why exactly is it that you want me to respect your privacy?’ You just back off.”
“How about Theresa?” DeLuca said. “In my business, coincidence is something you learn not to believe in. Was there somebody she might have been running from? I need to know, Josh.”
The younger man hesitated.
“Yeah, there was,” he said at last. “A guy named Leon Lev. He’d been saying she owed him money.”
“How much?”
“Twelve thousand dollars,” Josh Truitt said.
“And that would be because… ?” DeLuca suspected he knew the answer.
“Lev was her pimp,” Truitt said. “The guy is… I was going to say evil, but I don’t want to sound like George Bush. She moved here from El Paso to get away from him. I guess she thought if she came here
, he’d leave her alone.”
“Where does he live?”
“Juarez,” DeLuca said. “You don’t want to go there, and you don’t want to meet him, trust me.”
“If I only met the people I wanted to meet,” DeLuca said, “I wouldn’t have anything to do. Hang tight and call me if you hear from her. She’ll probably turn up on her own. There’s safety in numbers. It’s how we work. I’m sure she’ll call you. Nobody stays underground for long.” DeLuca laughed. “I forgot who I’m talking to. You probably know people who stay underground for months.”
“Beware ‘The Mole,’” Truitt said.
“What does that mean?”
“It’s sort of an urban legend, except that it’s not,” Truitt said. “Cavers are notoriously secretive. Finding a new cave that hasn’t been disturbed for ten or fifteen million years is like finding a new planet in the solar system. And the more beautiful it is, the sooner it’s going to be turned into a tourist show cave with a McDonald’s in the entry chamber, so when we find something, we keep it to ourselves, as long as we can, and we shun the guy who lets the word out. But if you do find a cave, you get to tag it. Mark it, with your personal tag…”
“That’s not despoiling it? Leaving graffiti, after fifteen million years?”
“You don’t spray paint ‘Class of 2004’ in six-foot letters,” Truitt said. “You do it in a way that honors the cave, somewhere inconspicuous, like signing a painting in the lower-right-hand corner. So The Mole is a guy who tags caves that nobody else has ever heard of before, so people get all excited and rope to the bottom of a thousand-foot tube, and there’s his tag. People say he lives underground. Or that he was born without eyes. He’s an albino who can’t expose himself to sunlight. It’s more than just a story. I’ve seen the tags myself.”
DeLuca looked at him. Josh Truitt was babbling because he was scared.
“All I’m saying is that some people stay underground,” he said. “Theresa was afraid of Lev. She said she paid him the money she owed him, but he kept claiming there was interest due. He’s a complete pig. And a true psychopath. If your bombs are as smart as people say they are, one of them would have found Leon Lev a long time ago.”
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