City of Sand

by Robert Kroese

  Sandford nodded. Evidently he’d either decided Lentz wasn’t in on the conspiracy or that there was no point in trying to hide what he knew anymore. “It’s bigger than I thought,” he said. “I thought it was just the cops, you know? Maybe the government. But it’s the whole city. He runs it. He runs everything.”

  “Who, Glazier?” asked Benjamin.

  Sandford nodded again. “I’ve been having these flashes. They started a while back, but now I’m seeing things more clearly. I see it. Sunnyview, I see it for what it is. I mean, it’s not even a city. It’s, like, a construct.”

  Benjamin shot a glance at Lentz, who nodded, as if to say, “Keep listening.”

  “What do you mean, a ‘construct?’” asked Benjamin.

  “I can’t explain it,” said Sandford. “It’s like a mass delusion. I mean, it’s real enough to the people in it, but only because they’re in it. They’re not real either. Most of the time I’m one of them, but sometimes I can see it, like, from the outside.”

  “And why is Glazier doing this?” asked Benjamin.

  “I don’t know,” said Sandford, shaking his head. “I think it’s like an experiment. We’re like rats in a maze. Except we’re not even real rats! We’re just, like, the idea of rats.”

  Benjamin was becoming frustrated. He wanted to think Sandford knew something about the conspiracy, but so far all of this just sounded like the ravings of a sleep-deprived, paranoid narcissist. None of it was going to help him find his daughter or get justice.

  “How is he doing it?” Lentz interjected. “Tell Mr. Stone what you told me.”

  Sandford nodded. “Something in the water,” he said. “That much I know for sure. They dump chemicals in the water, near the creek. It filters through the sand and gets in the water supply.”

  Lentz gave Benjamin a meaningful glance, but Benjamin shrugged. It was a coincidence, sure, but diabolical entities dumping mind-altering chemicals into the water supply was standard conspiracy theory stuff. Sandford could have gotten that idea anywhere. And his logic was faulty.

  “So everything we’re experiencing right now is part of an experiment?” asked Benjamin.

  “Exactly,” replied Sandford.

  “And this whole city is an illusion?” asked Benjamin.

  Sandford nodded.

  “But the creek running through it is real?”

  Sandford opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again. He clearly hadn’t thought this through. “I don’t know how it all works,” he said at last.

  “Okay,” said Benjamin. He turned to Lentz. “I think I’ve heard enough.” Lentz looked like he wanted to protest, but didn’t say anything. Benjamin got up and walked out. Lentz followed him. A uniformed officer waited in the hall.

  “Put him back in the holding cell for now,” said Lentz. The officer nodded and went into the room. Lentz followed Benjamin outside.

  “You don’t think it’s a little weird,” Lentz said, “Sandford coming up with that story about chemicals in the water? I mean, the rest of it is out there, I’ll grant you, but how do you explain the water thing? Isn’t that exactly what you were saying about this GLARE operation? They dumped chemicals in the water?”

  Benjamin stopped and turned to face Lentz. “So now suddenly you believe in a big, malevolent conspiracy running Sunnyview? Because of what that nutcase said?”

  Lentz stared at him. “I don’t get you, Stone. Yesterday you were trying to sell me on this conspiracy, and now you’re calling Chris Sandford a nutcase because he corroborates your story?”

  Benjamin bit his lip. Lentz had a point. Was he being hostile to Sandford’s story because it didn’t make sense, or because it sounded so much like his own? Up to this point, Benjamin had felt like he had some control over the narrative—that maybe whatever seemed to be happening in Sunnyview somehow revolved around him. In a strange way, he had found comfort in his own psychosis—the idea that there was something wrong with him, but that the world outside him continued to make sense. But now he was being confronted with the evidence of the reality of the conspiracy, and it unnerved him.

  “Alright,” Benjamin said. “So what do you make of his story? Are you saying you believe it?”

  “Not all of it,” said Lentz. “Of course I don’t buy that crap about having visions of the behind-the-scenes workings of the ‘real Sunnyview.’ My thinking was that he overheard something Jessica said to Payne or Glazier, and he’s just now remembering it, though a fog of self-delusion. In other words, I think it’s partial confirmation of your theory that Jessica was killed to cover up Glazier’s past sins.”

  “Yeah,” said Benjamin, without enthusiasm. “But your investigation is stalled while you wait for the feds to figure out what to do with XKredits, and you may recall that you barred me from pursuing the investigation on my own. In any case, the more I try to make sense out of what happened to Jessica, the less sense it makes.”

  Lentz nodded. “Truth is, I’m as frustrated as you are by this case. I guess I thought having Sandford talk to you might trigger an idea for a different way to approach it. But you’re right, it’s just more unsubstantiated hearsay.”

  “You going to let Sandford go?”

  “I’m going to have to. Between his personal history with Jessica and the glasses, we’ve got a pretty good case against him, but….”

  “But you don’t think he did it.”

  “No. If he’s involved at all, he was being manipulated by someone else, most likely Glazier or Payne. And if that’s the case, we’re better off letting him go and keeping an eye on him, see if he tries to make contact with either of them. But frankly I don’t see it happening. I get the feeling that he’s told us everything he knows.”

  “And a lot of stuff he doesn’t,” said Benjamin. “Not to mention that you have no corpse, which could make things awkward during the trial.”

  “Yeah,” said Lentz. “The feds have pretty well fucked us both on this case. Anyway, I’ll call you if I hear anything.”

  Benjamin got some lunch and then went back to the library. Whatever the FBI was doing, it had to have something to do with Glazier and GLARE. GLARE was not just something that happened in the past; in some form it lived on, and Glazier was still involved. Benjamin could feel it in his bones. There was something deeply rotten about that program, something that had caused the government to keep it even more deeply buried than Operation Paperclip or Project MKUltra. Something that was still going on.

  He spent the next couple of hours researching the history of chemical dumping in the Sunnyview area. As much as he hated to admit it, he was starting to think he had dismissed Chris Sandford’s ravings too quickly. Sandford had gotten under his skin, and not because he had been wasting Benjamin’s time. On some level Benjamin feared that Chris Sandford was just a little farther down the continuum that Benjamin himself was on. The line between his dreams and reality had begun to blur, and the past, present, and future were getting all jumbled together. And the craziest part of Sandford’s story, the part that would have once rung warning bells in Benjamin’s mind, was the one part he was fairly certain was true: at some point, evil men had poisoned Sunnyview’s water supply with brain altering chemicals. Everything else was just details.

  What had Sandford said exactly? That Sunnyview was a “construct,” whatever that meant. Some sort of mass delusion, Benjamin supposed. But he got the impression that Sandford didn’t even think the people experiencing the delusion were real. We’re like rats in a maze. Except we’re not even real rats! We’re just, like, the idea of rats.

  Solipsism, thought Benjamin. The idea that everything is illusory except for me. Except that Chris Sandford thought Chris Sandford was also part of the illusion. He, Benjamin, Lentz, Jessica—they were all ideas in someone else’s mind. Glazier’s, evidently.

  No, Benjamin couldn’t quite get there. Glazier was a powerful man, but he was just a man. And Benjamin wasn’t an idea in anyone’s head. If he were, what would be
the point of trying to solve a murder, or to figure out what was really going on? An idea would never be given free rein, would never be able to penetrate the secrets of the mind that created it. And Benjamin couldn’t accept that. Wouldn’t accept it.

  His rejection of Sandford’s solipsism wasn’t the result of philosophical rumination so much as a feeling in his gut. There was an answer here, somewhere. He could feel it. His dreams pointed toward it, and the clues—frustrating and contradictory as they were—were helping him get there. He just needed to trust his gut, and trust the deductive process he’d used to solve hundreds of crimes in the past. The answer was here in Sunnyview, and he was going to find it.

  He wasn’t going to find it at the library, though. He spent another three hours combing through old newspaper stories about dumping, class action lawsuits, the EPA and Superfund, but nothing that remotely connected to GLARE or any other aspect of his daughter’s murder. No, his gut told him the answer wasn’t to be found in old newspaper articles.

  He left the library and went for a walk, strolling downtown and trying to imagine it as it once was, a sleepy farming town surrounded by orchards. Orchards like the one he had grown up on, backing up against Sand Hill Creek. The creek that GLARE had polluted.

  Benjamin had spent thousands of hours playing in and around that creek as a child. He had resisted thinking about it until now, but the truth was, if anyone could have been expected to experience adverse effects from exposure to the creek water, it was Benjamin. But he had rarely been sick a day in his life. Even at fifty-eight, Benjamin was remarkably healthy, the only overt sign of his age being a little occasional stiffness in his joints. And he certainly hadn’t had any obvious mental or psychological problems. Had he?

  That was the problem with mental illness; you couldn’t trust your brain to diagnose it. But he’d passed a psych examination to become a cop, and he’d managed to hold down a job with the Portland police for thirty years. Sure, he’d had some problems with depression and drinking, but he’d never experienced hallucinations or anything like a psychotic break. By any reasonable standard, he was a normal, psychologically healthy individual. On the other hand, there were psychotics who had imagined extremely convincing and detailed pasts for themselves. How could he possibly know that he wasn’t one of them?

  He shook his head, arresting that train of thought. That way led to Sandford’s pointless solipsism. No, he had to trust his own experiences and his reasoning. Somehow the two would bring him to an answer.

  Benjamin was still contemplating this thought when he saw a young boy with brown skin and black hair darting across an intersection to the other side of the street. He was wearing pajamas.

  Felipe.

  It couldn’t be, Benjamin thought. Felipe was a grown man. What Benjamin was seeing had to be some sort of hallucination. The stress of his daughter’s death was getting to him, making him see things. But the little boy in the pajamas continued running down the street away from Benjamin, looking very real indeed. And if Benjamin didn’t pursue him, he would never know for sure.

  Benjamin crossed the street, barely dodging a Lexus whose angry driver honked and swore at him, and ran after the little boy. Nobody else seemed to notice the boy running down the street in bare feet and pajamas, which lent weight to the notion that he was a figment of Benjamin’s imagination. Even with bare feet running on pavement, the boy was as fast as he was in the dream, and Benjamin struggled to gain on him, dodging pedestrians as he ran. Finally Benjamin stopped, cupping his hands over his mouth.

  “Felipe!” shouted Benjamin, as a trio of window-shopping women stopped to stare at him. He thought he saw the boy slow for a moment, but then he continued running. Benjamin cursed and ran after him.

  His heart pounding in his chest, he gradually gained on the boy. The boy crossed an intersection and kept going, oblivious to the flashing Don’t Walk sign. Traffic rules didn’t apply to ghosts, thought Benjamin. It occurred to him as he approached the corner that Felipe was heading west toward the creek, just as he had in the dream. Where was he going? In the dream, he had been running to the dark castle beyond the creek, but there was no castle in modern-day Sunnyview. Benjamin was halfway across the street when he heard an unmistakable voice calling out to him from across the street to his right.

  He knew it was her before he even turned to look. It was impossible, but it was her. Jessica.

  She stood on the corner, wearing the same blouse and pants she was wearing the day she died. Her hair was damp and matted. Another hallucination, thought Benjamin. Soon I’m going to be imagining phantoms on every corner.

  It was the last thought that went through his mind before he was struck by a car and thrown to the ground.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The car hadn’t been going fast; when the light changed, it had rolled forward a few feet before the driver noticed Benjamin stopped in the middle of the street. The car stopped and the driver, a swarthy young man with a long beard and turban, threw open his door and ran to check on Benjamin. Benjamin was dazed and embarrassed but unhurt. He waved off the turbaned man and stepped back to the curb. People on all four corners of the intersection were staring at him, and he nervously walked back the way he had come. Jessica was nowhere to be seen.

  Things were getting out of hand. The dreams had been bad enough, but now the visions were spilling over into real life—not unlike Sofia’s visions. But his visions weren’t of the future; they were of the past. Was he going insane? How would he know? If I see things that aren’t real, but I know they aren’t real, am I still going crazy?

  Why was he seeing these things, these people? Why Felipe? As crazy as it was to see his dead daughter standing on a street corner looking like she had just crawled out of the creek bed, at least the vision of Jessica made some sense from a psychological standpoint. The vision of Jessica might have been a manifestation of his guilt over his daughter’s death. But what was with his fixation on Felipe? He had never even known Felipe as a young boy. Why did he keep seeing him? And why had Jessica not appeared until now? Maybe it was a symptom of the progression of his madness, but it seemed to him that Jessica’s appearance had been an afterthought, or even a response to his vision of Felipe.

  Yes, he thought. Thesis and antithesis. Two competing ideas fighting it out in his subconscious. Felipe had wanted Benjamin to follow him, but Jessica had stopped him. Why? Did she not want him to know what happened to Felipe? Did she want the evils of GLARE to remain hidden? Did she want her own murder to go unsolved?

  Well, if that’s what she wanted, she was going to have to try a little harder. He wasn’t going to give up so easily. He wanted nothing more than to get in the Buick, drive back to Portland, and try to get on with his life, forgetting all about Sunnyview. But there was still something about GLARE, something about Jessica’s death that he didn’t understand. And there was something about himself, something about who he was, that he had yet to understand. Until he did, he would never be able to leave Sunnyview behind.

  He returned to the motel and lay down, but was unable to sleep. When he closed his eyes, he saw his daughter standing on the street corner, her clothes wet, an unreadable expression on her face. “What do you want me to do, sweetheart?” he murmured aloud. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

  This thought was still tormenting him when his phone rang. It was Lucia, asking him if he wanted to come over for dinner again. Benjamin accepted the invitation, maybe a little too eagerly. He hadn’t realized how desperate he was not to be alone. Maybe it was foolish to think that being around other people would protect him from any more unsettling visitations, but it was worth a shot. Besides, he was growing to like Lucia and her family—even her crotchety Papá. And he got the impression she liked him as well. He hadn’t allowed himself to give much thought to his future beyond solving Jessica’s murder, but he wouldn’t mind eating dinner with Lucia and her family every night. The only flaw with that idea was Felipe. Benjamin was still convinced th
at Felipe knew something about Sunnyview, something that had to do with Jessica’s death. As long as Felipe was around, Benjamin didn’t think he’d ever be able to fully let go of his suspicions.

  Dinner was delicious as usual, and the mood at the house was a little more positive than the night before. Sofia had seen a child psychologist, who had prescribed her a low dose of an anti-anxiety medication. The psychologist had also scheduled an MRI for Sofia the next morning. He assured Lucia that it was merely a precaution to make sure there were no neurological problems contributing to Sofia’s condition. Lucia was clearly worried, but trying to put on a brave face for Sofia. Sofia, being the perceptive child she was, saw right through this. “It’s okay, Mamá,” she said. “They’re just going to take a picture of my brain. Taking pictures doesn’t hurt.”

  Lucia smiled and laughed. “No, mi cielo. You’re right. Taking pictures doesn’t hurt.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Benjamin leaped the creek, managing to land without losing his footing. He kept going, pursuing the boy at top speed. The dark castle loomed in the distance.

  Getting within a few paces of the boy, he dove at his legs, throwing his arms around the boy’s ankles. The boy went sprawling on the orchard floor.

  Out of breath and shaking with adrenaline, Benjamin scrambled forward and grabbed the boy’s right wrist, twisting it behind his back. The boy screamed again, the same horrible scream Felipe had emitted at Lucia’s house. It was too much to take. Once again, he had to let the boy go.

  The boy flipped onto his back and scrabbled away from him.

  “Please,” gasped Benjamin. “I’m not going to hurt you. Just tell me what that place is. The dark castle.”

  The boy shook his head. “Shhh!” he hissed. He got to his feet and ran, disappearing once again into the blackness.

  Benjamin sat up, his fists clutched in frustration. There had to be a reason for the dream. Something he was missing. He obsessed over it as he showered, shaved, and got dressed, going over and over it in his mind, trying to identify something in the dream that might give him a clue as to the meaning. Why was the boy running to the castle? What was inside? And why did it make Benjamin so afraid? Three times he’d asked the boy what the castle was, but the boy hadn’t answered.