Sherlock Holmes and The Roswell Incident

by Michael Druce

  “What are they, Lee? Are they hurt?” Jenny asked nervously.

  “I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out. We should get out of here.”

  As the couple turned to run in the direction from which they had come, three cars careened through the brush and tumbleweed and came to an earth-gouging stop in front of the pair. Doors flew open and slammed shut. Two blinding beams of light engulfed the young couple. “Stay where you are,” a voice commanded.

  * * *

  Abe Carl was deep in the mine when the ground rumbled. Beams above his head shook. Lights flickered. Loose dirt and rock peppered down all around him. “What the hell?” He mumbled to himself. If that was a tremor, he thought, another could come any second. Best to err on the side of caution. He packed it in for the night and made his way up to the entrance of the mine.

  He stepped into the crisp night and gulped down two lungs full of what should have been clean, fresh air. Only there wasn’t anything clean or fresh about it. The air was thick and smoky. “Fire,” he said to himself. Unusual since a heavy rain had moved through earlier. A fire burning on a night like this would be intense. He wiped the dust from his face with his bandana and peered toward the line of scrubs along the Eastern boundary of his ranch. He referred to his place as a ranch, but it was hardly that. Mostly it was a dry, windblown, fifty acres of tumbleweeds and shifting sand. His land hadn’t been a ranch for a good ten years. He didn’t own any livestock or raise much of anything other than a few vegetables. Abe had been a widower for as long as he had owned the ranch. The ranch was an insurance settlement intended to compensate him for the loss of the woman he had married at seventeen. No question the ranch had helped the old man fill his days chipping out a living in the mine extracting iridium, but it had not made up for the absence of the woman he had loved.

  Iridium is a rare element commonly associated with meteorites. That it should be found in the Earth’s crust has given rise to speculation that it is not naturally occurring. Many in the science community believe iridium is the result of a massive meteorite impacting the Earth almost seventy million years ago. Some scientists went so far as to suggest that meteor could have been responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. Abe Carl couldn’t speak to that, nor was he much interested. What he knew of iridium was that it was an extremely dense element that had value in the science and medical communities. It was well suited for use in thermoelectric generators, spark plugs, and crucibles. It also earned him a modest annual income.

  The fire appeared to be burning down. From Abe’s vantage point it didn’t appear threatening. Out here there was little damage a fire could do. Most likely it was a meteorite. Still, Abe thought he ought to have a look. You never knew. He grabbed an axe and a torch and made his way toward the orange glow flickering through the scrubs.

  Moving through a cluster of burned and hewn down brush, Abe came upon the source of the flames. He drew a breath and steadied himself with the axe handle. He had not stumbled onto a meteorite at all; he had come upon a crash site. Bits and pieces of torn and twisted metal were scattered about. Was it a plane? If so, it wasn’t like any aircraft he had seen before. It was a disc, saucer shaped. The outer layer of the craft’s skin had burned away leaving only a twisted and rapidly collapsing skeleton. Ever since the war ended, there had been rumors of top-secret aircraft over the skies of New Mexico and Nevada. Perhaps this was one of those. Suddenly something spooked him. There was movement and the rustling of crushed brush. Abe turned on his light and pointed it in the direction of the sound. Two beings came into view. Abe’s heart skipped a beat. “Good God,” he said to himself. Whatever he was looking at, they were not human. The two beings froze. They appeared disoriented and confused. Abe held tight to his axe. He wasn’t sure if they would attack or flee. Raising his axe for protection, the two creatures turned away from Abe and fled back in the direction from which they had come. Abe aimed his light into the brush. At once another light from the other side of the crash site appeared. Quickly Abe turned off his light. There were others. Why? Why would others be out here in the middle of nowhere? Whatever that burning object was and whatever those creatures were, Abe knew he had stumbled onto something he shouldn’t have. Before he had time to think, several cars appeared from nowhere and raced toward the fire. Headlights glowed across the scrublands. The two creatures, one now leaning against a rock and the other on the ground, were silhouetted in the glare of headlights. Soon additional, more intense lights illuminated the area. Abe thought he could make out two additional figures between the headlights and the waning fire, but he couldn’t be sure. Whatever was going on, it was big. The sudden appearance of cars and people running around had to mean government officials, and Abe didn’t trust the government. He had heard plenty of strange stories over the years. You hear enough of them and you begin to think there’s something to them. His was the only ranch in the immediate area. It wouldn’t be long before the suits came knocking at his door. He knew of cases where people got into trouble just minding their own business, and here he was a potential witness to something he was sure he was not supposed to see. He needed to protect himself. He needed to share what he had seen with someone else. He knew exactly who to call. He had a friend at the Roswell Daily Record. For the time being, he’d keep the part about the creatures to himself. There might be a perfectly plausible explanation that he hadn’t considered. But the burning wreck, that was a saucer all right. No doubt about that.

  Taking care not to be seen, Abe Carl quietly slipped away from the crash site and returned to his little house near the mine. After pouring himself a stiff drink, he telephoned his friend at the newspaper.

  * * *

  “Stay right where you are! If you move, we will shoot!”

  The young couple froze in place, reaching for each other’s hand.

  From the glare of the blinding lights, two men emerged. The taller of the two was dressed in a military uniform; the other man wore a suit. The man in the suit looked toward the lights and dragged a finger across his throat. Lee and Jenny closed their eyes, believing the worst was about to happen. Immediately the lights of both automobiles dimmed.

  Jenny was sure her heart had stopped.

  “Who are you?” Lee asked nervously.

  “We ask the questions,” the taller of the two men replied. “What are you doing out here?”

  “We saw the fire. We thought it might have been a crash.”

  “It wasn’t a crash,” the man in the suit said.

  “But there’s wreckage everywhere,” Jenny said. “You can see it for yourself.”

  “There is no wreckage. This is an ordinary fire started by a lightning strike. Understood?”

  Lee and Jenny looked at each other and then at the two men. They nodded their heads.

  “Good, we understand each other,” the man in the uniform said. “I am Major White. This is Mr. Black.”

  “There’s a car a couple of hundred yards back. Is it yours?” Mr. Black asked.

  “Yes,” Lee said.

  “Where are you two from?”

  “Roswell,” Jenny replied.

  “Roswell? That’s damn near eighty miles away. What the hell are you doing all the way out here?”

  “We spent the afternoon at my grandparent’s place in Corona.”

  “Which doesn’t explain what you are doing out here.”

  “We were parking,” Jenny burst out. “We stopped to make out for a while. That’s when we saw the fireball, I mean, the lightning storm that started the fire.”

  “You both of age?” Mr. Black asked.

  “Look, who are you guys? Are we in trouble because we’re parking?” Lee asked.

  “We are both eighteen,” Jenny said.

  “We don’t care about that. We are concerned, however, about how clear you are about what happened here tonight.”


  “We’re clear,” Jenny warbled. “It was a lightning fire.”

  “And?” Mr. Black asked.

  The boy and girl looked at each other, perplexed. Lee threw up his hands. “We never saw you two?”

  “Correct answer,” Major White said. “You can go.”

  “We need a ride back to Roswell. All four tires on my car are blown out.”

  “Rough night for you kids. Give us a few minutes.”

  Mr. Black made his way back to the cars and conversed with a small group of men who had been waiting. After a few minutes, Mr. Black returned to the young couple and the Major.

  “We’re set,” Mr. Black said. “The Major and I will drive you home.”

  Thank goodness, Jenny whispered under her breath. She made herself a promise. This would be the last time she and Lee would go parking.

  “What about my car?” Lee inquired.

  “We’ll have it towed,” Major White said, slipping behind the wheel of a dark colored automobile with a white star on the door. Mr. Black held open the door for Jenny and Lee to slide into the back seat. He joined the major in the front. After ascertaining Jenny’s address, the major steered the car down the bumpy dirt road and then turned onto the highway back to town.

  When the lights from Roswell finally came into view, Jenny squeezed Lee’s hand, relieved that they were almost home.

  The drive back to town had taken place in complete silence. Suddenly Lee asked, “What were those creatures? There were two creatures in the woods. We saw them.”

  Major White braked suddenly, turned the car about, and sped off in a different direction.

  Roswell via Las Vegas

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  July 7, 1947

  The invitation arrived at 221B by special courier. The correspondence had originated in Washington, was passed along to Whitehall, and then to Holmes. After quickly consuming the contents of the letter marked eyes only, Holmes passed the document to me.

  “Read it and burn it.” He said, filling a pipe.

  I quickly scanned the letter, then using the match Holmes had lit his pipe with, I set the letter ablaze and dropped it into the fireplace.

  “Thoughts?” Holmes asked, drawing mightily on his pipe.

  “The Americans have a high-profile murder involving a senator and a lady of the evening. It seems clear cut. Why involve you?”

  “Clearly, the evidence is pointing in a direction that does not comport with the narrative the Americans wish to convey.”

  “Surely they can recast the crime scene however they wish.”

  “Unless others have already seen it and can offer a countervailing scenario of the events that unfolded.”

  “In other words, they need a credible and entirely disinterested third party. And who better to fit that bill than Sherlock Holmes?”

  “Watson, really, you make me blush,” Holmes chuckled.

  “It really isn’t our sort of thing, is it?”

  “Not our sort of thing at all.”

  “Yet you intend to accept the case.”

  “You have gathered that, have you?”

  “Holmes, we have been companions far too long. I should prove unworthy of your society if I failed to observe the expressions and mannerisms you exhibit when your intention is to accept a case.”

  “My expressions and mannerisms? Interesting. We shall pursue that notion at a future date. As I have no interest in a transatlantic crossing, I should normally decline such a case, especially since the purpose is to exploit my generous gifts. That this request comes from Whitehall, I must assume Mycroft owes the Americans a favor.”

  “It seems you have no choice.”

  “We have no choice, Watson. You will be joining me.”

  “Nothing in that letter remotely hinted at my involvement. You know very well I have a holiday planned.”

  “And you know very well I require your services.”

  “I know no such thing. My contributions to your solving of cases are all but negligible. You most certainly have no need of whatever it is you are attempting to coax me with.”

  We both knew I brought nothing to the table when it came to the unraveling of mysteries. My role was that of confidante and sounding board.

  “Companionship, dear friend, companionship. It should go without saying, but I will say it anyway. I value your company as both a friend and colleague.”

  “Flattery, Holmes?”

  “I abhor the idea.”

  “Sentiment then?”

  “I am merely stating fact.”

  Fact indeed! Holmes could never allow such an admission. No matter. When it came to Holmes, I was a soft touch. We simply had too much history together for me to abandon him now. My holiday would wait.

  Two days later we were on our way to the states via TWA Constellation.

  The sensational murder case we had been called upon to help investigate had taken place in a suite of the recently opened Flamingo Hotel on the Las Vegas strip. Given the amount of time that had already passed, Holmes worried that critical evidence may have already been contaminated, possibly deliberately. For him, crime scene evidence was a living organism. It required care and nurture. He had seen too many flatfoots destroy evidence through carelessness. Cases had gone unsolved. Evidence had simply been allowed to perish.

  Upon our arrival in Nevada, we were met at Alamo Field by Colonel Jim Patterson who filled us in on the details of the case as he knew them. He had flown in from Washington D.C. Those involved with the investigation had government security clearances, which meant local officials were to be kept out of the information loop. Cover stories were fabricated to conceal the sordid details from the public. It was all quite sensational and lurid, but in the end hardly worth our time.

  According to Colonel Patterson, the senator had invited the young lady to his room for a cocktail. After several drinks, he became inebriated and abusive. When the young woman tried to lock herself in the bathroom, the senator kicked in the door. A bottle of cologne was knocked off the vanity and shattered on the bathroom tile. As he attempted to grab the young woman, the senator slipped on the spilt cologne, lost his footing and hit his head on the tile surrounding the shower stall. The blow to his head was fatal.

  Without question, this senator of previously unblemished character had conducted himself in the most scandalous of ways. More to the point, the senator held a seat on a powerful senate committee of which his party currently held a one seat advantage. If the opposition could exploit the sordid details of the senator’s murder, they might influence the choice of the deceased senator’s replacement to turn the advantage in their favor. Could Holmes help?

  “Now we are to it, Watson,” Holmes whispered. “Politics, my friend, politics.”

  We were shown several photographs of the deceased senator and the fresh crime scene itself. Holmes spent very little time with the photos. He carefully studied the room and the bathroom in which the senator’s fatal fall had presumably occurred. The carpet in the room designated as the living area was of special interest.

  Accustomed as I was to the methods employed by Holmes, Colonel Patterson seemed anxious and felt the need to add to his previous narrative. Holmes raised his hand for silence.

  “The senator did not die from a fall in the shower. He was killed earlier. His body was dragged into the bathroom. Note the lines in the carpet.” Holmes pointed to the furrows in the carpet’s pile. “A haphazard attempt has been made to smooth out the carpet. Perhaps with a Hoover. As to the smear on the tile surrounding the shower, it is far too bloody to have been produced by slipping and striking one’s head. The bloody smear was applied post mortem.”

  “What about the scuff mark on the bathroom floor?” Colonel Patterson asked.

  “Did you inspect the heels of th
e senator’s shoes?”

  “No.”

  “Observe.” Holmes knelt. “Note this small gap in the scuff mark on the tile. This suggests a gouge in the heel of the shoe. An examination of the senator’s shoes will reveal no such gap. Judging from the photographs in which the senator’s shoes are clearly visible, the scuff mark is inconsistent with a man of the senator’s weight. This mark was made with another shoe, one much lighter than the heavy wing tips worn by the senator. A heavier shoe would have produced a thicker layer of graphite. This mark is much too light.”

  “What about the murder weapon?”

  “A champagne bottle.”

  “Champagne bottle? There was no champagne bottle.”

  “And yet there are two empty champagne glasses on the cocktail table. Judging by the nose of the empty glasses, a Dom Perignon ‘43. If you search the mezzanine two floors below this room, I suspect you will find the remains of a shattered champagne bottle. It is unlikely to have survived being dropped from the window.”

  Colonel Patterson snapped his fingers, immediately dispatching two officers to search the area below the senator’s room.

  “What about the cigar ash crushed into the carpet? The senator was a cigar smoker.”

  “The ash isn’t that of a cigar. It is cigarette ash of a type of tobacco found in a dozen American cigarette brands. The ash, however, is irrelevant. It tells us only that someone smoked. Perhaps all three.”

  “Three?”

  “Yes, the young woman and her accomplice.”

  “An accomplice? There is no indication of a third person.”

  “A hotel employee. A porter most likely.”

  “If this is the crime you believe it to be, what was the motive?”

  “Extortion.”

  “How may we prove that?”

  “Find the porter with the shoe that matches the mark on the bathroom floor. Review hotel records for the purchase of the champagne. Locate the camera among the porter’s personal possessions.”