by Ani Gonzalez
The audience leaned forward, interested. Most of them were either townsfolk or hard-core fans who'd been involved in the paranormal for a long time. There was much whispering and muttering as people recognized some of the perpetrators. Caine ended his talk with a list of best practices that allowed fans to identify legitimate groups and organizations. The room lit up with multiple camera flashes as the attendees took pictures of the list. Caine encouraged group leaders to adopt the list and turn it into a pledge.
Then it was Sean's turn. As he made his way to the podium, Caine introduced him to the crowd, highlighting his good relationship with PRoVE and his support for the town's somewhat peculiar tourist industry. Sean thanked the attendees for their support, explained that his office wanted to make sure that the town remained a safe place for visitors, and announced a new hotline for fraud tips and questions. The final slide of the presentation was a picture of a stern-faced David Duchovny with the words "Trust No One" underneath.
Then it was time for hot dogs and pretzels.
But Sean didn't get any because he was mobbed by people asking questions about whether a rival group was under investigation, or telling him about a case in New Orleans that wasn't part of Caine's list. He asked everyone to send in the info through the hotline so they could keep track of it.
Patricia came out with a tower of Stay-Puft marshmallow man cupcakes and the crowd dispersed to forage for sweets and slimy green Jell-O. Sean took advantage of their distraction and went off to find Luanne.
Who was nowhere to be seen.
He found Holly, the assistant librarian instead. "Have you seen Luanne?"
"Yes," Holly said, her face somber. "I gave her a big hug. I didn't know what she'd been through. That's horrible."
"Yes, it is," he agreed. "Where is she?"
Holly scanned the room. "She was talking with Caine and Cassie, and they had a large group around them. Everyone is trying to reassure her of their support." She pursed her lips. "There's Caine, but no Luanne. She may be in the divination section, taking a break. That's where she usually works." She pointed towards a book-lined alcove in the far back of the library.
"Thanks."
"If you find her, tell her I have her DVDs." She grinned sheepishly. "With all the excitement, I forgot to give them to her."
"Will do," he replied, pleased. The DVDs would keep Honoria busy.
He walked through the crowded book stacks, weaving through the empty book carts. The noise from the crowd faded as he neared the divination section, and it was quiet when he finally reached the alcove.
Luanne was sitting at a desk, crying. The red-tinged afternoon sun streamed through a nearby window, making her hair gleam like copper. Her shoulders shook as she sobbed.
The sight tore at his heart. This was what he'd been dreading all day as he'd coordinated with the feds.
He grabbed her shoulders, lifted her from the chair, and held her close.
"Everyone's been so nice," she sobbed into his shirt.
He buried his face in her flame-colored hair. "They're your friends. Of course they're nice."
That just made her cry harder. He held her for a long time, waiting for the tears to subside. He felt completely useless. He could handle gunfire. He could handle violence.
But he couldn't handle tears. He'd never been able to.
Eventually, the waterworks stopped. She looked up, eyes red, and gave him a tremulous smile. "Sorry about that."
"It's okay," he replied, not letting go. "You did a great job."
"Thanks." Her lip trembled. "Caine and Cassie deserve most of the credit."
"Nonsense. Nothing compares to personal experience."
His comment made her even glummer.
"The PRoVE staff taped it," she said. "And they'll put it up on their website and on social media. I'll also put it on my website and my blog. I wrote a post on it and everything." She licked her lips nervously. "I don't know how my clients will react. Trust is so important in my business..."
Her voice trailed off.
"Don't worry. The fact that you helped uncover the Lucky Ghost scam will go a long way toward reassuring your clients. We'll make sure everyone knows you contributed to the arrest."
Her eyes widened. "You solved it?" She looked confused. "But how?"
He grinned. "I guess I know a gold ingot when I see one. It must be my Manhattan upbringing."
"Gold?" she exclaimed.
He shushed her quickly. The information was still confidential.
"You mean those bricks are real?" she whispered.
"Hiding in plain sight like Poe's purloined letter." He shook his head. "Apparently Larry has spent the last couple of weeks carrying around two million dollars in gold bullion. Everyone assumed they were fake, so no one suspected."
"Larry?" she looked surprised. "Larry was running the scam?"
"Yep, he needed the money to buy the gold. The guy thinks the aliens will pick him up tonight and use his gold as fuel."
"Seriously?" Doubt was clearly written on her face.
He nodded. "He's got a long history of schizophrenia. He's on meds, but I guess they stopped working. The feds are watching him. They don't want to make a big fuss, so they'll arrest him after the event tonight."
Luanne looked sad. "Poor guy."
"Don't feel sorry for him. He's our prime suspect."
Her jaw dropped. "Are you sure?"
He nodded. "William Darling was one of the Lucky Alien investors. We think that he found out about the fraud and contacted Larry for an explanation. Larry set up a meeting in Banshee Creek and..."
Luanne shook her head, the dangling earrings glinting in the afternoon twilight. "It can't be Larry. It just can't be."
Sean tilted his head to the side. "It is him. FinCEN tracked a couple of payments to a bank account under his name. They also have security footage of when he bought the gold. Those transactions are highly regulated, so there's no doubt it's him."
Luanne still looked doubtful.
"Wait." His eyes narrowed. "Are you upset because he doesn't fit your astrological profile?"
Luanne blushed. "I did an, er, unorthodox reading. Let's just say an arrest wasn't in the cards."
Sean laughed. "Well, you got your reading wrong. He's definitely the guy and we're definitely getting him tonight."
She frowned. "He can't..." Then she seemed to change her mind. "Maybe you're right. But that doesn't explain why Mary was looking at me so strangely during my presentation."
He leaned forward. "The AASC boss? What did she say?"
No one was supposed to know about the arrest. Had there been a leak? If so, it must have been someone from his station. He'd find out who and there would be hell to pay.
"Nothing. She was silent. She was glaring at me. Eyes like lasers."
They must have a leak. Crap, he had to go warn Agent Morelli.
"I'll look into it. I have to go back to the station and get ready for the arrest tonight." He kissed her lightly on the forehead. "Be good while I'm gone."
She grabbed his arm, her eyes troubled.
"Be careful," she whispered.
He patted her hand and disentangled himself. "I'll be fine. Now go get ready. It's almost time for the Close Encounter."
Luanne rolled her eyes. "Can't wait." She straightened her clothes and ran her fingers through her hair. "I'll meet you there. Caine wants to film a segment at the landing site, and I need to retouch my makeup."
He nodded and headed for the exit. When he reached the door he took out his cellphone and dialed Agent Morelli.
"Heads up," he said. "The suspect may have been warned."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
"JUST STAND there," Caine pointed to a spot in the grass. "And tell us how you calculated the coordinates. Don't worry about the technical details. We can add pictures explaining them during editing."
Luanne nodded and walked to the spot. They were in an apple orchard in the outskirts of town. The landing spot was on a h
ill next to the dirt road that criss-crossed the planting area, and she could see Larry's van parked down the road, the antenna on top aimed at the sky. The afternoon sun was sinking under the horizon and the place was full of people.
The enterprising owners of the orchard had set up a produce stand. They were selling fresh cider, caramel apples, and slices of apple pie. They didn't have many customers because everyone had filled up at the PRoVE spread earlier in the day, but that didn't seem to faze them. In spite of the large signs warning people to stay away from the equipment and seedlings, the owners seemed quite welcoming.
Sean and Olivia were walking around the orchard. Luanne didn't see any other officers around, although DeShawn, the really hot fireman, was there eating a caramel apple with some of his Fire & Rescue colleagues. Luanne glanced at Sean nervously. He seemed confident that he had cracked the Lucky Ghost case, but she couldn't ignore her unease.
But with the police, feds, and fire department here, it should be safe enough. The apple orchard was a veritable surveillance state right now. The AASC members all had hand-held phones and sensors, and the PRoVE team had brought cameras and assorted recording devices. A group of PRoVE staffers was controlling a drone that swept over the crowd, eliciting hoots and hollers.
Gus, standing beside Caine, put down the camera he'd been aiming at Luanne and scratched his head. "We have AASC interviews, multiple panoramic shots, a chat with Cassie about her whole 'medieval fairies were similar to aliens' theory, and, now, another segment with Luanne. Why do we need so much background footage?"
Cassie snorted. "To cover up the fact that nothing's going to happen."
Caine nodded. "Let's face it. When we turn up our cameras at the time of the supposed alien encounter, we are going to get big fat nada. That's okay, sometimes you get null results and that's science too, but we will still need some content for the show. Hence all the filler."
"Fine," Gus sighed, aiming the camera again. "Let's get on with it."
"Hurry. It will be dark soon and we still have to interview the fella with the gold bricks."
Larry was next? The guy who was getting arrested? But Luanne didn't have time to ponder Caine's statement because Gus aimed the camera at her, and the light started to flash. She was on.
She talked about the auto parts hoarding incidents of the seventies and eighties and about Venus crossing Capricorn, and described how they'd done the calculations. She did videos and podcasts for her blog all the time, so this came easily. She found her groove quickly and was chatting about harmonic convergences, Mayan astrology and the Incan calendar, when a panicked shout rang out.
Gus almost dropped his camera and Caine looked around wildly, searching for the source of the sound. Luanne saw a lone figure scrambling down the hill.
"NWO, NWO," Larry screamed as he ran toward them. "The black helos are here."
The response was not what Luanne expected. Everyone took out their phones and started filming. Even Gus aimed his camera at the sky, searching for helicopters. Caine grimaced and slapped the back of his friend's head.
"Have you lost your mind?" he asked. "There's nothing there. This guy is a couple of flautas short of a combination plate."
Luanne winced, recalling Sean's words. This time Larry was right. They really were out to get him.
Mary Mclure ran to meet Larry, who'd stumbled to a stop at the top of the hill, right next to Luanne and her PRoVE crew.
"They're after me," he panted, hands on his knees. "The MiBs, they're after me."
Mary grabbed his shoulders and looked right into his eyes. "Now, sweetie, you know that's not true."
Larry shook his head, his messy reddish hair flopping haphazardly. "No, they're...they're after my fuel."
Mary embraced him, trying to soothe him. "Nonsense. No one even knows about it."
Luanne regarded the scene with sympathy. Larry's instincts were spot on.
"I have to get to the van," Larry said, sounding less distraught now.
"But you have an interview right now," Mary said, turning to Gus and Caine. "Right?"
"He sure does," Caine said, affecting a jovial manner to put his subject at ease. "Our viewers want to know about your gold fuel theory. One of the comments on our website claims that it's impossible because the weight of the metal would nullify any benefits."
Luanne noticed that Gus had surreptitiously turned on the camera. The interview was on.
"That's just pure ignorance." Larry's demeanor instantly changed. He pushed his glasses up his nose and looked up at Caine calmly. "It assumes that the fuel cell will use bulk gold, which is impossible. You have to treat the metal to assume a nonporous form. It also assumes that gold itself is the fuel, which is ridiculous."
"It is?" Caine seemed surprised.
"Of course. The fuel is solar energy." Larry threw up his hands, as if he were explaining the obvious to a team of dullards. "It's abundant in outer space. You don't need anything else. The gold nano particles merely catalyze the beams."
"Wouldn't a solar sail work just as well?" Caine asked.
"Yes," Larry conceded. "But the sail only provides propulsion when the photons bounce off it. The idea is to have both propulsion sails and absorption sails. The absorption sails would be made of solar cells that would soak up the solar energy and the gold nano particles would catalyze it into liquid energy which you could then use to run living spaces and such."
Luanne listened, fascinated. This, she had to admit, almost made sense. Larry's theories were more coherent than she'd believed.
The conversation kept on going and Larry expounded on the math behind his theory and the kind of spaceship that could use this technology.
"It's not a flying saucer?" Caine asked. "But what about all the sightings? They all describe ovoid spacecraft."
"Yes." Larry pounced on Caine's statement like a predator scenting vulnerably prey. "It looks like a flying saucer when it enters the troposphere, but that's because the sails are folded into the structure so the atmospheric friction doesn't burn them up. In outer space, however, it looks like a spinning disk with sails all around."
"A heliogyro," Caine said, nodding as if he understood what Larry was talking about. "That's an intriguing theory."
"You can see the shape in various antique artifacts," Mary interjected. "The Phaistos disk from ancient Crete, for example."
Caine raised a brow. "No one has broken the code in that disk. All they've translated are references to the shining goddess."
"No," Mary agreed. "But we are quite certain that the shining goddess is a star system. One theory is that it may be a summary of a manufacturing or operational process. It could be a manual or instructions left behind in case of emergency."
Larry shook his head. "You know I don't agree with that. You can't fit solar sail manufacturing or gold canalization into forty-five characters."
"But you could fit artifact maintenance," Mary noted. "And the so-called 'shield' emblem does look like a gyrosail. And it would match the 'sun boat' structure in the Nebra Sky Disc."
Larry shook his head. "No, the disc is a different thing..."
Luanne's mind drifted as they discussed the dimension of the sky disc. The sun was sinking into the sky, Larry and Mary were arguing about a four-thousand-year-old lump of clay, and everything looked peaceful and calm. True, it was a geeky, pseudoscientific peace, but nothing looked dangerous.
And, still, she couldn't shake a feeling of foreboding.
Was it just her pride speaking? Her stupid Lucky-Ghost-Vamp-Whatever fortunetelling session had indicated that the scam master would achieve his goal, and, yet, here was Larry on the verge of getting arrested. Maybe she'd misunderstood. Perhaps the flyers meant that Larry would get the help he needed. Sometimes the cards, or flyers in this case, promised success, but it wasn't always the kind of success one expected.
Or maybe Larry wasn't the culprit.
But he had to be, right? Sean said the feds had fingered him. That seemed pretty def
initive. Her own horrid prosecution was proof that the feds always got their man. Sometimes, they even got a few extra fish.
She left Caine and Gus to finish the interview and walked around the orchard. She couldn't see Sean, but Olivia was chatting flirtatiously with DeShawn under an apple tree, and Cassie was interviewing people with her smartphone and asking them about their experiences. Everyone seemed to be happy and excited about tonight.
"What do you think will happen?" Cassie asked a worldly teenager with straight blonde hair.
The girl rolled her eyes. "Nothing. My parents drag me to all these events and nothing ever happens."
Her younger sister nodded in agreement. "Sometimes, if we're really lucky, there's a flash of light."
"Last month we saw an owl." Another roll of the eyes. "It was such a thrill."
The younger girl waved her caramel apple. "At least we get snacks this time."
"I can't believe you're eating that." Her sister grimaced. "That has so many calories. You have no idea."
Luanne grinned, then jumped when she felt someone tap her on the arm. She turned to see Myrtle Watson, lugging her ever-present bag and a bright yellow foldable chair.
"Are you leaving already?" Luanne asked.
"Yes." Myrtle's pink hair was a cotton candy halo around her head. "I'm pretty pooped."
"But you'll miss the big event." Luanne looked around. "I think the PRoVE guys have better seating somewhere."
Myrtle snorted. "The big event is a bunch of people humming the 'Close Encounters' theme and taking pictures of moths. I had a slice of apple pie and a bottle of cider, and I'm ready to go back to the motel." She glanced around. "This has been fun, but it's a bit too much for my sciatica. Can you help me with this, dear?"
Luanne reached for the bag, but Myrtle handed her the chair instead.
"Thank you," Myrtle said with a smile. "This saves me a lot of trouble. I just have to stop by Larry's van to pick up something."
"You're okay missing the encounter?" Luanne asked. "I think the landing time is really soon."
