by Scott Powers
He nodded.
"You ever going to tell me the rest of your story, of what the hell has been going on?"
"Maybe. You ever going to publish it?"
They took a few more steps in silence until they reached Fish's car. Fish beeped the locks, grasped the door handle, and pulled open the door.
"Probably not," Fish said.
CHAPTER 28
BRASS IN POCKET
Back in Columbus, Max and Eve found an edgy, antsy, cynical Ted holding court with Jen and Val.
“It’ll never go anywhere,”he said.“There’s no one left from that incident who can talk. And there are no fingerprints from the silencers on any of it. And if those county mountiesget anywhere close to the truth, the feds will take over the investigation, just like they’ve taken over the institute investigation. That’s the way they do it. They win. It’s rigged so that they always win.”
“Bullshit,”Eve said.“We won this time.”
Ted nodded. It was quite possible what they had was an enormous victory. He was still very interested in what they had discovered in the storage drawers, and whether any of it was real. Despite Ziv’s assurance all the Roswell artifacts were faked, Ted was sure some were real. That ceramic plate Melnhad shoved in his pocket had stopped a bullet. The paperwork they’d videoed was looking more and more authentic. And then there were the scratchy symbols on the slate they had examined. Ted had been poring over the video for days now.
All of those things were gone now, of course. If not vaporized, like Ziv himself, they would have been scooped up and ferreted out quickly by the silencers' plants in the federal investigation teams.
Ted was certain what they found was worth publicizing. Their tests on the swatch. The files. The symbols. It would take nuance to get this information out, and they would have to take their chances with how the silencers would react. But it was a wealth of information that forwarded so many viable theories.
“You’re right, Eve. This time Zivdidn’t win,”Ted said,“even if we have no physical evidence. In fact, the destruction of all the physical evidence at the institute could work in our favor.”
“Don’t be stupid,”Max said.“Without this stuff, all we have is unsubstantiated video. More assertions. More mystery. No proof. That’s exactly what Zivwanted. This would perpetuate the belief in UFOs based on reports that can’t be proven. Keeps them in business and yet does nothing to threaten their secrets. I’m not even sure we should ever release this stuff.”
As long as the public was aware of the institute fire, and the FBI was investigating, it was a bad time to go public, Max argued. Unless they wanted to risk arrest, they would have to be careful.
Ted knew that.
He already had the OSU lab video to worry about.
It wasn’t just that they had a handful of live witnesses to the tests in Meln’slab. Val had posted Jen’s video on YouTube. It had become a minor viral video phenomenon. The video already had drawn several thousand views, and the action was accelerating. The gunshot at the end, destroying the camera, no doubt helped.
Ted’s identity in the video was clear. His face and body were shown. Reputable scientists talked with him by name. Besides, they knew he’d organized it. That might not have been a big deal before, but now Ian Meln was dead in a very public death. The only known victim of the blast also was in the video. And it ended with gunfire. The FBI must be curious.
Still, Ted pushed to release what they had, as soon as possible.
“I'll take my chances. And I'll never give you guys up. The world must know, no matter what,”he said.
“They’ll connect the dots,”Max said.“The city cops know there’s a link to the institute. They’ll follow it. And they’ll hear about Roswell, and that will bring them to us.”
“But they won’t get anywhere,”Ted countered.“The silencers will control the federal investigation, which won’t cooperate. That’s why we have togo public. We take advantage of the conflicting agencies.”
Max didn’t like the idea at all, but he knew that Ted would not be talked out of it. It made sense for the network.
Max knew Ted would eventually want to release all his videos and findings. Ted was obsessed with the symbols and the records. Max couldn’t blame him. It was impressive and it would play well in the UFO community. It was just a matter of timing.
They would have to wait. And they could wait. So for now, Ted could play the cynical bitch, because he knew they needed some time.
Perhaps one day they’d have to deal with Ziv’s and Meln’s murders, two arsons, and a couple shootouts. Would authorities care?
Max shoved his hands in his pockets.“Okay, I’m in, if we keep Eve out,”he said.“And Jen. And Val, of course.”
That night, lying next to a snoring Max, Eve had the dream again.
A last time.
As Specialist Mirada left Ranra Ali's house, she saw the deadly scene unfolding in the street. Faheema lay bleeding and crying with a mixture of whimpers and shouted pleas for mercy. Her son, with blazing red hair, threw another rock, the size of a baseball, and it glanced off Faheema's arm and then the side of her head. She grunted and then shrieked. Beside him stood the elder commanding him. Behind him stood several other men dressed in tunics, urging the boy on.
Eve drew her sidearm and shouted for the old man to stop the boy.
"You stay out of this! This does not concern Americans!" he replied. "Now punish her! Allah's will be done!"
Grimacing and shaking his head hard, the boy lifted a large rock, large enough to crush his wicked mother's skull.
Eve waved her gun at the old man, making it clear to him she was going to shoot him.
"Tell him to put that down! Tell him to stop!" Eve shouted.
"Specialist Mirada! Stand down now!" Lieutenant Hunt shouted from somewhere behind Eve.
As Eve stared hard, the elder transformed. He was Ziv.
The boy before him was Eve, as a girl. It was her grandfather, Old Joe, lying bleeding in the street, readying himself to be killed.
"Do it, Eve," Ziv commanded the girl with the rock.
Now Eve was terrified and paralyzed with confusion.
And now she was the girl holding the rock.
From that perspective, she looked around. Meln was aiming a gun in her direction. Max and Jen were running up behind him. Behind Eve stood several men in black, and behind them, Eve's mother and brother.
"Do it, Eve," Ziv ordered.
"Tell her to stop!" Meln responded.
Eve raised the stone high over her grandfather's head. He frantically waved his arms.
"Stop now! Stop now!" Meln demanded.
"Lower your weapon, Ian!" Max yelled at the demon.
Eve, the little girl, slammed her hands forward and down with all her might.
There was no gunshot.
There was no sound of a cracking skull.
There was only the sound of the metal spike clutched in Eve's hands thucking into the muddy sod. She was not in a street in Marja. She was in a grassy field. Her grandfather did not lie in terror before her. Neither did Faheema. The only thing before Eve was an iron marker topped by a crescent moon and star.
As Eve looked up, she saw her grandmother Fay and Faheema al-Jabaar in the rain, beckoning her.
Eve sat bolt upright in bed. Her head cleared and the dark motel room emerged around her.
Max snored beside her.
She got out of bed and found a robe hanging in the bathroom. She headed out into the cool, quiet of the night.
But as she closed the room door, she woke Max. He turned and saw Eve no longer beside him.
"Eve?" he called out. "Eve?"
In the dark, with just enough light from a street lamp shining through cracks in the curtains, he got up and made his way into the bathroom. She was not there. He looked around for clothes to put on. He fished around in the dark and picked up the jeans he had worn that day, but they still were soaked from the rain. He tossed them on the
floor in the corner and grabbed another pair of jeans off the chair. He'd worn this pair to the institute. They'd gotten soaked too on Friday, but were drier now. They were bloody and torn and in need of laundry, but they would do. He pulled them on. He found his shoes and wriggled his feet into them.
He grabbed his room keycard from the nightstand and shoved it into his jeans pocket. Deep inside that pocket, the tips of Max’s fingers touched something. He withdrew it in the low light, in wonder.
He found Eve outside the hotel lobby, sitting on a bench surrounded by landscaping. The bench ostensibly was the motel's smoking area. Eve sat there staring at the stars.
He came over and huddled next to her.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
She nodded. He nodded too and joined her in stargazing.
"Strange how people who suffer together," Max sang quietly. "Have stronger connections than people who are most content.
“Dylan. Brownsville Girl. Wanna know what comes next?
“I don’t have any regrets. They can talk about me plenty when I’m gone."
She smiled.
“You got what you were looking for,”Max said.“And I got answers about Di. We could both wrap it up. But we won’t, will we? You’re hooked.”
“On what?”
“On those," he said, waving at the stars. "It may take months. Years. But you’ll realize there’s more you want to know. You’ll realize there is more here for you than just solving your grandparents’deaths. And whatever the hell that was with the other thing. The iron marker.”
Eve looked intoMax’s eyes.
“What do you want, Max?”
“I want to give you something,”he said.“Don’t tell Ted. Or Jen or Val. This is whyI know you’re going to come around to thinking like I do.”
She blinked.
“So, these were the pants I wore to the institute. They got soaked, remember? I tossed them in the car. But today I got my other pair soaked too, so I just put these back on again.
“I found this in the pocket. I must have picked it up that night. I just can't remember. I know what this means for you. More than you think it does yet. Like I said, one day, you’ll know.”
She kissed him softly.
“Yeah, well, anyway, here,” he said.
From his pocket, Max withdrew Eve’s swatch.
The end.
About The Author
Scott Michael Powers is a journalist and novelist living in Florida. He’s spent more than 30 years writing about everything from NASA rocket launches to presidential campaigns, murders to theme park business, and nuclear waste contamination to shrimping, always keeping an eye out for great characters. You meet all kinds, and some of those characters have inspired him to create fictional stories. He’s an Ohio native and Ohio University graduate, but grew up as an Air Force brat living here and there from California to New York, North Dakota to Texas. He and wife Connie Powers live in an Orlando, Florida, neighborhood with lots of big trees and cops for neighbors. This is his first published novel. He is currently writing his second, The Murder Plague, due for publication in late 2017.
