“I’m curious,” I said, seeing my opening. “Were you aware of David’s talent? I mean, that he’s as brilliant as he is?” I tried not to use the past tense.
“Of course. We figured he’d catch up with his own ability when he got to college. In the meantime, we just wanted David to lead a normal life. You only get to be a kid once.”
That, I understood. “Do you have any idea why he’d be taken?
“You must be the tenth person who’s asked us that. Do you want to search his room, too?”
Huh? “Who else has asked you that question?”
“Reporters are calling from all over the country. I’m already using my caller ID to screen calls.”
I felt it creeping in through my pores, it being a gnawing feeling that I’d missed something. “And they want to search his room?”
“They’ve asked, but we’re under orders not to go in there.”
Huh? In her own house? My gnawing feeling turned into an aching throb. “Under orders from whom?”
Jenna hesitated, and my antenna went up another notch. Even over the phone I could tell she’d just caught herself in something. “Mrs. Robelle?”
“I might as well tell you,” she blurted. “You’re going to find out anyway. Some people from the government called and said they were sending someone to search David’s room. It seems they found some evidence that David was exchanging information on the internet with those NASA scientists who were taken.”
Wham! Pow! Thunk! “Do they have a warrant?”
“I… I guess they do. I really don’t know.”
“Some people, you said. Do you know who they were, what agency they’re from?” I couldn’t get the words out fast enough.
“Not really. Chuck took the call. He’s going to meet them when they get here.”
I went for it. “When is that going to be?”
“They’re coming all the way from D.C. Chuck said they probably wouldn’t get here until after dinner.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Robelle. Would you mind if Chief Mulroney and I came over and joined the party?”
* * * * *
I hustled to the ’Vette and called the police station on my cell phone, finding out that Roy had gone home for dinner. I called him there and filled him in on the situation, saying, “I figured I’d pick you up and we’d head on over.”
A pause. “Have you eaten yet?”
“Uh, no. Don’t you think we need to get over there ASAP?”
“Johnny, take a breath. We’ve got time. I’ve got Chuck’s work number, as well as his cell number. I’ll track him down and tell him to stall these government people until we get there. He’ll do it. Meanwhile, I’ll have the missus set an extra place for you at the table.”
That sounded pretty good, actually. I pulled up to Roy’s and the door was open before I even got out of the car. Mrs. Mulroney—Mary, she said to call her—said, “He’s out on the back porch getting the grill ready. It’s such a nice night I figured we’d eat out there. Is that all right with you?”
It was a nice night, warm for the end of September, still had to be close to seventy degrees with not a stir in the air. I made my way through the house, thinking that grilled anything sounded pretty good right about now, seeing as all I’d had to eat was donuts for both breakfast and lunch.
Without even turning around, Roy said, “Help yourself.”
He was pointing to a small cooler atop an old teak table, inside of which were a couple of beers and a couple of sodas. Roy was having beer. I had one too.
“I have some ideas,” Roy said, his back still turned as he ran a wire brush along the smoking grill grates.
I took one of two weathered Adirondack chairs that faced the water, the sun flush and warm on my face. I swigged on the beer. “Shoot,” I said.
“Allison Kovar and Scott Reemer are going to be taken somewhere three days from now. Do you think there’s any way to avoid that?”
The smell of Old Spice was hovering in the air, and I noticed that Roy was wearing different clothes. Beyond him, the water was calm, waves lapping gently on the powdery Jersey sand. “Unless someone, or some thing, steps in to alter history, I think probably not,” I answered. “That is, if what I wrote in the future paper is true, which I assume it is if it’s under my byline.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I told you before that I don’t write bullshit, Roy. That’s for the Enquirer.”
“I’m not talking about you writing bullshit. I meant the part about altering history.”
The words hung there, begging for attention. “What? Do you think it’s possible?”
Mary came out and handed Roy a plate of fresh tuna steaks. He dropped them on the hot grill, and columns of fragrant smoke curled into the air. When Mary was back in the house, he said, “The people who kidnapped David have a mission, and their symbol is a swastika on a field of blood. I’d say there’s a pretty good chance that they’re trying to do just that.”
It took a second for the enormity of what Roy had just said to hit me. Mary came back out carrying two bowls.
“Potato salad and corn on the cob okay with you, Johnny?”
* * * * *
“Altering history? Go on.” Roy was stuffed into the passenger seat, and he gave me a sideways glance as I backed out of his driveway. He hadn’t pursued the conversation at dinner, but he got back to it as soon as he got in the car.
“Do you remember when John Hinckley tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan?” he asked.
“I was just a kid then, but, yeah, I remember.” Where was he going with this? I wondered.
“When Hinckley took those shots, while all the attention was focused on him, do you think a second assassin could have taken out the president?”
I swung the ’Vette onto Ocean Avenue and headed toward the inlet bridge; the Robelles lived on the other side of it. I remembered that my dad had reported on that story in some manner, and I remembered the TV pictures clear as day. I replayed the scene in my head, picturing Ronald Reagan heading toward his limo, the shots ringing out, the Secret Service men pouncing on Hinckley and the president simultaneously. “I suppose someone could have taken another shot or two.”
“Or five.”
“All right, or five. I suppose another killer could have taken advantage of the situation and positioned himself, knowing that Hinckley was going to pop off at the president.”
“Especially after having studied the video and knowing every move that was going to take place on the sidewalk that day.”
“Right.” I looked at Roy, who was staring at the orange ball that was the setting sun. A band of light leaked through the visor, cutting his face in half. “So you’re saying, what? That if Ronald Reagan were actually killed that day, it would have changed the course of history?”
“Something would have changed, wouldn’t you think? Maybe the Berlin Wall wouldn’t have come down. Maybe the Cold War wouldn’t have ended the way it did.”
I downshifted as I neared the bridge. “Hell Roy, with enough information, and enough study, you could go back in time and affect all kinds of things: events, elections, you name it; not to mention getting rich by knowing to buy Microsoft when it first came out.” Roy didn’t respond right away, and I thought about the concept. “Going back in time to affect history should be illegal,” I said.
Roy finally averted his eyes, and the band of light slashed across his cheek. “Maybe it is,” he said.
* * * * *
We pulled up to the Robelles’ house. The only car in the driveway looked to be the family SUV, which meant that the dudes from D.C. hadn’t arrived yet. It gave us time to play out the possible scenario.
“We may never get a look at what David and the NASA scientists were talking about,” Roy said.
“Really?” I hadn’t even considered that.
“It could be classified, and you know how these government monk
eys are. We’d need to get clearance from God first.”
“But it could give us some insight as to what David was into, maybe even some idea of why the teachers are going to be abducted.”
“Just keep in mind that no one knows about that, unless you’ve spilled the beans.”
That reminded me once again that only a few people knew about the future newspaper. “You know,” I said, changing the subject, “if something goes wrong, and the teachers aren’t returned safely, you could be in a heap of trouble. Are you sure you want to sit on this?”
“But you reported that they’d be returned safely.”
“And you’re banking on that?”
“What other choice do I have? Look, Johnny, for me this is still about Sea Beach and its residents, and how to protect them. The government people have other priorities. Do you think the scientists were the only ones abducted?”
“There no way for us to know otherwise.”
“Precisely. And it was hidden from us in the beginning. What’s to make you think they’re leveling with us now?”
I hadn’t thought about that.
“Let them worry about their end of it, and I’ll worry about this town.” Roy turned away, and added, “I wouldn’t want the first dead body to turn up to be one of ours.”
If that wasn’t a dose of reality…. “Do you really think that could happen?”
“Terrorists deal in death. Do you think they’d wipe out our memory banks if we’d gone to the year 2194 to have tea and cucumber sandwiches?”
Getting back to the original point, I said, “What if we don’t get a look at David’s computer?”
Roy looked at me, and said, “Then we have to prepare Allison Kovar and Scott Reemer for their trip to the future.”
Chapter 15… Remington Returns
Roy and I did get a look at David’s computer that night, but to no avail. The correspondence that had been detected took place via an online instant message program, and perhaps in a chat room for sci-fi nuts, which we found out David was into. As such, there were no residual files in his Outlook program.
“David talked to people all over the world,” Chuck had revealed as he pointed to the volumes of sci-fi books on David’s bookshelf. “I figured it was just people in his club. Who knew it was something real?”
Also interesting were the pages of mathematical formulas that were found in one of David’s spiraled school notebooks. We all thought it was homework, until one of the government guys—there were three of them, two from the National Security Agency, and Paul Corvissi, the guy from NASA we’d met the day after Lost Friday—got a look at the formulas. “This didn’t come from any high school textbook,” Corvissi said.
Chuck and Jenna looked at each other and shrugged, and that’s when one of the twins, who’d been listening outside the door, popped into the room and said, “It has to do with rocket stuff. Sometimes I can hear him through the wall talking about it.”
Softly, Corvissi said, “Who’s he talking to, honey?”
“No one. He just talks to himself. Sometimes he talks to his girlfriend too, but not about this stuff.”
Corvissi smiled, then turned some of the pages in the notebook, and stopped smiling. Ten minutes later, he and his two associates were suddenly in a hurry to leave, computer and notebook in hand. “We’ll get back to you,” he said.
Roy looked at Chuck, and said, “Don’t hold your breath.”
We talked to the Robelles for a while. Neither of them knew what was in the notebook. “I don’t understand any of that math stuff,” Chuck admitted. “There’d be no reason for David to share that with me.”
“That would be a one-way conversation with me too,” Jenna concurred. “Like Chuck said, we knew he was talking to people all over the world in his science fiction club; I guess some of it was more science than fiction.”
Roy and I left shortly thereafter, not really discussing much more of the situation as both of us were pretty whipped. We did make plans to hook up the next day—that was September 30th, the one-week anniversary of Lost Friday, and two days before Kovar and Reemer were scheduled for their second excursion into the future. I had the morning to catch up with Kelli Remington, who was due back from her D.C. assignment.
I got to the office shortly after seven, which seemed like noon to me given the last few days, and she was already waiting for me. Fresh hair, fresh makeup: for a second I forgot that I was supposed to be pissed at her, and I almost asked her to dinner for the sixty-first time in what was now six months, three weeks, and nine days. Now, there was a reason for it, and I figured I had a shot this time. Not only that, I’d had a decent night’s sleep, and, knowing that I was to hook up with her this morning, I made sure my hair could have been that of a Greek god. She must have sensed my annoyance, however, what with her traipsing down to D.C. on Romano’s order and not even checking with me, because she put a Starbucks coffee on my desk, and said, “You know, Romano sent me to D.C. just to get me out of his hair. I thought you were going to give me my assignments.”
This girl was sharp, I thought, disarming me before I even had a chance to get into it. “Was it worthwhile?”
She smiled, and plopped a stack of papers four inches thick on my desk. “I’d say so.”
I eyed the stack. “And that is?”
“What the scientists were working on.”
I looked at her, and said, “Good girl.”
* * * * *
Romano came in around eight and gave us a quick, “I’ll catch up with you in an hour,” but it never happened. He went from one meeting, to another, to another, which was fine with me, but Remington was on a high. She wanted to put a story together so badly that she just couldn’t sit still. I tried to stay professional, only looking down her blouse once when she bent over my desk to go over the material she’d dug up.
“How’d you get this stuff?”
“They’re called boobs, Ed,” she said, quoting the line from the movie Erin Brockovich. “The same ones you’ve been looking at for the last hour-and-a-half.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I quipped, feeling my face heat up. I didn’t look up, however, fearing that if I looked her in the eye, I’d turn to stone. I came to the last page of the material, and asked, “Is any of this off the record?”
“Most of it,” she answered, not hiding anything.
“Then what good is it?”
“Gee, let me think. Maybe it’ll help us find David Robelle?”
I knew what she was trying to do, but I didn’t fall for it. If most of it was off the record, the best we could do was print it and say it was from a reliable source high in the government. We’d sound like we were sensationalizing rather than reporting, and, knowing Romano, he wouldn’t let anything off the record get that far.
“Did you have a chance to check out the veracity of any of this?”
“No.” Her eyes got kind of steely right then because I think she realized where I was going.
“And what about the president? I don’t see any quotes from him in here.”
“There aren’t. I got stonewalled.”
“So he saw through your bluff—or someone did.”
Her eyes softened, and I felt myself empathizing with her. I’d been in that position a hundred times, but I’d never been in a position to reject what was clearly very good work. “If you’re going to strong-arm your sources, you have to be able to back it up.”
“We’re talking the president of the United States,” she shot testily. “Isn’t it enough that I got what I got?”
“No,” I snapped. “Off the record means off the record. If you go with this now, you’ll burn up your sources. You’re not ready to go to press with this yet. Go back and get some more.”
“But—”
“No buts, Remington. I said you’re not ready.” I could almost smell what she was thinking, so I added, “And if you’re thinking about going to Romano, I’d
advise that doing so would be a big mistake.”
Glaring, “What are you going to do with this,” she asked, pointing to the pile of documents.
Good question. What she’d brought back were the identities of two NASA scientists, along with the dates of their disappearances, which weren’t the same after all. She’d also done an admirable job of researching their backgrounds and establishing their areas of expertise. That was only the bread and the mayonnaise of the sandwich, however. The meat was the name of the project they were working on.
“That was classified,” she said. “I couldn’t get anywhere near it.”
“So, you’re basically giving me their resumes,” I said. The documents indicated the scientists were doing advanced work on rocket propulsion systems, but that was hardly big news. She’d established her own Deep Throat, but she needed to work the source harder.
“We need the name of the project. Clearly the Pentagon is involved; see if there are any congressional ties. Also, I’d assume NASA has people working on rocket propulsion systems all the time; find out what made these guys so important. Otherwise, all we got is scientists doing research, and that’s no story. Oh, and find out if they were married. The wives may be the best place to start. I’ll sit on the rest of this until you come back.”
Standing now, she stabbed the air with her pen. Everyone could see that we were having a bit of a tiff, but now they looked away as our discussion was clearly cruising toward ugly. “But what if someone gets this first?” she hollered.
Suddenly, all the lessons from all the editors I’d ever worked with came back to me there in my chair. “What if they do?” I shot back. “Our angle is how this relates to David Robelle. If it’s any help, last night I found out that David was exchanging information with these guys.” I filled her in on the visit from Corvissi and the two guys from the NSA, along with the discovery of David’s notebook. “David’s little sister said the notebook had something to do with rocket stuff, too.”
“That’s a connection,” she said. “Where’s the notebook now?”
“Corvissi took it, along with David’s computer.”
“There’s no copy?”
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