Dragonfly Bones

by David Cole

  “People said that to Galileo.”

  “Am I going to have to close down the call center permanently?”

  “No,” I protested. “That’s a dead giveaway. How do you assign who works at what workstation?”

  “Randomly. By shift.”

  “And what happens if a workstation fails?”

  “I’ve got six spares.”

  “Get one,” I said. “Put it right in this cubicle, then make sure that nobody is assigned to this machine for a few days.”

  I yanked on the power cord, snapping off the connections to the motherboard. Two more yanks and the ethernet and phone cables were free.

  “You can’t take that!”

  “How do you bring hardware in and out of here?”

  He shrugged, nodded. I yelled for Brittles while Caraveo brought another workstation out of his cage. Quickly setting it up, he studied the motherboard I’d pried loose, shaking his head. I handed him my loupe and he saw it immediately. A small break here, there, unexplained components, an extra chip.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Don’t know. I’m not a hardware guru.”

  “How’d you spot that?” he said with awe. “Man, I thought I could do anything with these boxes.”

  “You’re young,” I said. “Give it time. You’ll learn. But while you’re waiting, we’ll need to know the names of anybody who’s had access to these workstations over the past year. You must have, what do you call them, trustees? Helpers? Inmates, whatever?”

  “A few,” he said, eyes narrowing to slits and then popping wide open. “There was a guy. Seven, no, eight months ago. I’ll get his name.”

  “Brittles!” I shouted. “Come here.”

  Caraveo made a short call, turned to us, his jaw hanging open. The person at the other end had hung up, but Caraveo stood motionless, in shock, until the phone started beeping a message for him to hang up.

  “What’s the inmate’s name?” Brittles asked.

  “Marriott. William Marriott.”

  “Let’s go talk to him,” Brittles said to me.

  “You can’t do that.”

  “I’ll get the permissions. Thanks for your help here.”

  “No. You don’t understand. Marriott was shanked yesterday. He’s dead.”

  Finally outside the prison, outside that grim, cold place, I sat at a picnic table on the grounds, crying again. Brittles hung nearby, turning the motherboard over and over in his hands, reluctant to bother me. He laid the motherboard on the table, started to ask me something.

  “No,” I said. “I’m done with all this. I’m done with the deal. Get me my daughter, let the two of us alone.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “No hassles. But, as a starter, I need to know what’s wrong with this computer thing. We need to tell Don.”

  I wiped my eyes with the three soggy tissues in my pocket. Took out my cell, punched in Don’s number. He answered immediately.

  “Wi-fi,” I said. “Motherboards on some computers have been altered so that everything typed is being sent over a wireless network.”

  “Outside the prison,” Don said. It wasn’t a question. “But where?”

  “I’m out of this now, Don.”

  “Don’t you have a Mac Powerbook? Doesn’t it have software that detects these wireless nodes?”

  “Yes, Don,” I said sarcastically. “And you have the same equipment and the same software. You look for the outside source.”

  “Is Nathan there?”

  I handed the phone to Brittles, but he said nothing, listening to Don for only half a minute and then making another call, walking away from the picnic table so that I wouldn’t hear the conversation.

  “Here’s the deal,” he said, shutting down the cell. “You don’t have to do anything. But you’ll have to wait until we pull your daughter out of the camp.”

  “Let’s go there now.”

  “Can’t do that. She’ll only be released to the custody of that friend of yours who pretended to be the stepmother. I just checked.”

  “I don’t have to do anything,” I emphasized. “I wait, I get my daughter.”

  “That’s the deal.”

  “So will you take that motherboard back to Don? Just leave me alone?”

  “Okay. Want to get something to eat?”

  “Later. I’m going to get a few things from my house.”

  “Only if you let me drive you there. I’ll feel safer. You’ll feel safer.”

  “Drive me there,” I said reluctantly. “But once I’m home, you leave.”

  Brittles called Zeke Pardee, told him to pick up the motherboard at Friedlander’s CIU office. I knew Brittles struggled with the decision. He wanted to carry the board directly to Don, he wanted to take me directly to my house.

  20

  But once we pulled into my carport, I didn’t feel very safe. Without thinking, without wanting to think about it, I kept my legs going to the door. Barely inside, all my anxieties from the past year rose like ghosts, as though I’d never achieved any natural balance to life, never moved beyond the frantic rhythms of keeping busy, using hacking as a fourteen-hour-a-day distraction from my anxieties and addictions.

  Wandering the house, kicking dispiritedly at some of my cartons, I felt things nagging at me, something I’d forgotten, some data I’d discarded too quickly. I went from room to room, standing in doorways, standing at the patio door for a moment until the biker’s helmet blossomed in my imagination and I had to turn away.

  Gradually I realized that most of Rich’s things were gone. He’d sorted out what he didn’t want and dumped them on the floor. Clothes, books, CDs, even his guitar, everything lay exactly where he’d dropped them.

  I finally found a handwritten page on a kitchen counter. Lines from one of his children’s stories that he tossed off, dreamed of getting published, though he never contacted a publisher.

  “How far are the stars?” Rich asked Laura one day.

  “I don’t know,” she said, “they seem pretty far away.”

  He asked his dad, who said, “Ask your mom.”

  He asked his mom, who said, “Ask your dad.”

  Rich was out of ideas and feeling sad.

  Late that night Rich awoke.

  His room was glowing and he began to float.

  His room disappeared and he heard a voice say,

  “Welcome to our sleek space boat.”

  “It’s called a space ship,” Rich said, “and why am I here?”

  “You’re on our space ship to take a space trip,

  So come on, Rich, let’s get it in gear.”

  And below this, Rich had written in red ink

  I’m outa here—toss my other stuff into

  some of your boxes—or just burn it all

  Opening the fridge, I started to pull out a can of Mountain Dew, popped the top, and had it to my lips before I recognized the old pattern. I emptied the can into the sink, ran the water, drinking right from the faucet. My heart rate slowed, gradually, the pulses no longer resonating in my head, and I recognized that my life was improving, was growing more holistic, more cohesive in purpose and tranquillity, despite the stress of meeting my daughter and the bittersweet contradictions between finding Rich and uncertain what to do about Nathan.

  Also wondering about Rich’s reaction to the trashed sliding door, and the obvious bullet holes stitched around walls, cupboards, and ceiling. Maybe he thought I’d shot it up myself, yes, that must be it, expressing my anger at our relationship, at him. But that made no sense to me at all, how somebody could think that way. I looked for another note. Maybe he’d written some questions, something friendlier, something…I didn’t know what. I picked at the top layers in the garbage can, but found nothing.

  Brittles walked across the backyard, studying the biker’s footprints, running a hand over the wall next to the sliding door, finally disappearing around a corner.

  One last tour of the house, collecting a few things, most of them
just picked at random. The house seemed, at last, to be empty. Just a few days ago, I’d never have considered that, never have dwelled much on my cardboard boxes. I wondered how many times in the past few months with Rich I’d lived with the assumption that life was good, life was not to be questioned. A false assumption, I knew now. How many other false assumptions did I have? Was Abbe Dominguez really my daughter? How does one know a blood relation, if you haven’t seen that person since she was only two years old? How much time did people spend their lives with false hopes and assumptions, with that inevitable sense that life, down underneath, is not a joy but a hopeless, unfulfilled burden?

  Enough of this, I thought, nodding to myself, nodding hard with the acceptance that this house really was empty for me, that, like Rich’s note, I was moving on. Bye bye. Outa here.

  “Come on,” Brittles shouted from the front door. “Don’s got something.”

  revelations

  Tamár Gordon carefully stacked all the brown envelopes on top of each other. She squared the stack, turned it on its side like a deck of cards, and fanned the envelopes out onto her round stressed-oak table.

  “Fifteen identities,” she said.

  “Praise the Lord,” Micah said.

  “Praise the INS,” Tamár answered. “If it wasn’t for my connections with immigration people in Phoenix, this would have taken years.”

  “‘I knew a man in Christ,’” Micah said, bowing his head, not noticing that both Tamár and Galliano exchanged cynical smiles. “‘Whether in the body, I cannot tell, or whether out of the body, I cannot tell.’” Micah looked up, beaming. “Second Corinthians twelve, most of verses two through four. The fourth of the sixth Raptures. And how many innocents are delivered up by these documents?”

  “Seventeen,” Tamár said. “Mostly Chinese, several from Burma, one from Tibet, and four from Colombia. Fourteen are for girls, three for boys.”

  “Political refugees,” Galliano said, crossing his legs at the ankles, smoothing out the creases in his linen trousers. “It’s a nice metaphor, Micah. Delivering these girls from political terror.”

  “The Raptures are not metaphoric,” Micah said calmly. “Without Jesus, the flesh will not be saved on The Day.”

  “These girls would have had their flesh ravaged. They would have been raped, probably again and again. In the wrong hands, they’d be imprisoned without a trial. In the worst hands, they’d be tortured and killed.”

  “Anthony,” Micah said in his business voice, “please, how you wish on your own time to discuss women, and the use of their bodies, is for you and not me. I know of these things, but I do not speak of them.”

  “Agreed,” Tamár said. “Now. I have seventeen identity kits. How many girls are in the Rapture camp?”

  “Eleven girls. Two boys.”

  “Excuse me,” Galliano said. “I thought there were three boys.”

  “Rudolpho Corazon left yesterday.”

  “Yes, I know he left, but didn’t he come back?”

  “No. He left with his friend Emilio, but only Emilio returned.”

  “Excuse me,” Galliano said, standing. “I must make a phone call.”

  “Stay,” Micah said. “I must get back to the camp. Another girl is coming this afternoon. I must be there when she arrives.”

  “Don’t explain the Raptures to her just yet,” Tamár cautioned him.

  “I never do at the first meeting. I let the other girls make inquiries. I let you do background checks to verify the girl is a legitimate candidate for Rapture. And so, my dear Tamár, good-bye.”

  He stood forward to place a hand on her hand in benediction. Galliano intercepted the hand as it moved to her. Micah tried to remove his hand, but Galliano held it firmly.

  “I shall let myself out,” Micah said. “Thank you again for these documents. ‘And when Jesus had spoken these things, while they beheld, Jesus was taken up and a cloud received Him out of their sight.’ Acts chapter one, nine through eleven.”

  “Have you ever heard my story about the Raptures?” Galliano asked.

  “No.” Micah smiled. “Please, Anthony. Tell me.”

  “A friend of mine. From South America. From a very privileged family, nothing too expensive for her. Spoiled, bad spoiled. Her parents preached the Raptures to her. Preached of Revelations, the Second Coming, the Judgment Day, when sinners would be left behind.”

  “Good parenting.”

  “They bought her a brand-new Range Rover. Power this, power that, every conceivable option, including a giant sunroof that she could power back. Being wild and careless, she loved to set the car on cruise control, kneel on the front seat at high speeds, and stick her head up through the sunroof while driving.”

  Micah tried to pull his hand away from Galliano, but couldn’t.

  “So. The second week she had the Range Rover, she’s on a mountain road, following a slow truck with stake sides, filled up with something. Those mountain roads, those South American drivers, bad things happen. To shorten the story, an oncoming car smashed into the front of the truck. A gigantic collision, and several dozen people started flying upwards from the open back of the truck. My friend, she saw all those people going up, she went from being terrified that she was going over the cliff to being ecstatic that she was witnessing the Raptures.”

  “Ahhhh…” Micah said. “And it was a hallucination?”

  “Oh, no. That’s the moral of my story. She stood on her front seat, half her body out of the sunroof, thinking she was in her moment of redemption and would be raised unto Heaven. But the truck was loaded with inflatable dummies, going to a rich landlord’s birthday party. Since the dummies were full of helium, when the truck crashed, all the ropes gave way and the dummies floated up, like balloons.”

  “And your friend?”

  “She forgot to brake her car. She smashed into the back of the truck and was decapitated.”

  “I have hope for you yet, Anthony,” Micah said reluctantly as Galliano released his hand. “Perhaps another day. Good-bye.”

  From a window, Tamár and Galliano watched his chauffeured car pull out of the garage and move on down the street. Galliano lit a thin cigarillo, moved his upper lip back and forth across the lower lip, rolling the cigarillo as he smoked. He wrapped his hand around one of her wrists and suddenly squeezed so tightly she gasped in pain. And in that moment, she realized with real fear that she no longer controlled him.

  “That was…messy. The thing on Campbell Avenue.”

  “We’ve got to close it all down,” Galliano said.

  “The Prejean girl was in custody. We couldn’t get her away from them legally. Left us no alternative.”

  “Still…it was messy.”

  “Necessity is often untidy. But they missed that other woman.”

  “Who is she?”

  “We’re looking at a computer security firm. Aquitek. I can’t find it listed anywhere in Tucson, so we’re checking Phoenix. Another necessity.” Tamár smiled, patted Galliano on the cheek. “You’re such a dignified gentleman, Antonio.”

  “Anthony.”

  “Dignified. Calm. Efficient. Brutal.”

  “The whole chain of custody will have to be eliminated.”

  “And Father Micah?” Tamár asked. “Does he have to be one of them?”

  “Rapturized.”

  “He might see it that way when it happens. How will it happen?”

  “I’m not sure, yet. There are two others I’ll have to deal with first. How do you want to handle the girls at the camp?”

  “We’ll bring them here one at a time. I’ve already made arrangements on the Circuit, they’ve all been assigned. So they will stay here overnight and then fly to whatever city they’re assigned.”

  “That anthropologist that I saw on the news.” Tamár crossed her legs, quickly uncrossed them. “Sorting the bones. Should we deal with him?”

  “They’d just realize the bones were even more important, and bring in experts from all over the c
ountry. No. The anthropologist is nothing.”

  “And the bones?”

  “Our only real problem,” Galliano said. “I doubt seriously that they can easily be identified. Perhaps not at all, but that won’t keep the crime scene forensic people away.”

  “Here is the list of the others,” Tamár said nervously.

  He crumpled the paper in his hand without even looking at it.

  “Don’t you even want to check the names on that list?”

  “There’s one final thing. The information circuit. We may not have any more use for it, but I’ve taken care of the man at the prison. I need to find this computer firm. They may have access to all the data transformed over from the prison. If they do have it, we need…how shall I put it?”

  “Another…rapturization?”

  “Are you frightened?” he said.

  “How frightened should I be?”

  “A lot more than usual.”

  “You’re hurting me, Antonio. And you’re really starting to scare me.”

  “Don’t play with words like that,” he said. “Frightened. Scared. You’ll get used to saying those kinds of stupid things, you’ll say them to the wrong person someday. You’ve moved young girls around this country without much thought about what will happen to them in another ten years. AIDS. Beatings. All kinds of abuse, once they’re no longer beautiful enough for the Circuit and drop down through the next levels of selling their bodies.”

  He let go of her wrist when she nodded. She rubbed the white marks of his fingers, massaging her wrist, cocking her head as a new understanding came to her.

  “You’ll be leaving me soon.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “Soon,” he said.

  “When?”

  “When the chain of custody is all…rapturized.”

  “Anthony the gentle brute. You have such metaphors for murder.”

  “In this country, ‘murder’ is a police term. A legal term. Nothing more. Without being able to establish chain of custody, there are no problems.”

  “But you’re not a policeman in this country.”

  “How far can I trust you?” he said.

  “Trust me,” she said. “But when your murder list grows every day, I can’t help but be frightened that you’ll add one more name at the bottom. Mine.”