Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

I f the Others wanted to hurt us, we’re no match for them,” Shannon says as I’m reminded of how quickly rumors can cause an uproar. “Imagine if they did to us what we do to everything else. What could be more hideous? But I don’t believe they would.”

“It’s people we should fear. They’re who bring death to our door.” I rummage in the snack drawer near the coffeemaker.

“In my opinion, that’s why the Others are here. To help before it’s too late.”

“Well, if they have any remedies, I’d be most grateful.” I carry granola bars and small bags of peanuts to my conference table.

“When I was growing up in Galway, I used to see strange lights dancing at night over the river Corrib and the ocean.” Shannon says this wistfully with a far-off stare. “My father referred to them as the Star People checking on us. He’d tell me that we were wondrously made by beings from another galaxy, which I thought was grand.”

“What you’re alluding to is a scientific theory that life here might have been started by beings from outer space.” I place the snacks in my briefcase. “The Others, as you call them.”

“One of my earliest memories is a starship landing on our neighbor’s farm when I was just a wee thing.” Shannon launches into one of her tales. “He said it looked like a gigantic upside-down spinning top with blue lights under it, and I saw for myself the burned circle left in the grass—”

“Shannon…?” I gently interrupt.

“And the neighbor told us about these childlike beings who floated off the ground. I remember he described them as grayish with huge dark eyes, all of them looking exactly alike with thumbless hands that were a bit like claws. They were curious about him but not the least bit harmful. And certainly, they could have been…”

“What we don’t need are wild tales and hypotheticals.” I open a cabinet, retrieving my jump-out bag prepacked with clothing and other necessities. “Marino and I are meeting Lucy at the airport, and I don’t know when we’ll be back. The Secret Service is in charge, and I’ll update you as best I can when able. In the meantime, I need you to cancel everything for the rest of the day.”

“That would be your one o’clock with the Telegraph, and let’s see what else.” Fishing a pair of glasses out of a pocket, Shannon opens her datebook. “After that it’s the Boston Globe and the Washington Post again.”

I collect my satellite phone as I think of the many times I encouraged Sal to carry one when visiting the observatory in West Virginia. It’s in the heart of the National Radio Quiet Zone where there are no cell towers, all wireless devices prohibited and rendered unusable.

A satellite phone is all that would work in the Quiet Zone. But he refused to use anything that might interfere with Green Bank’s massive radio telescope or those at the nearby National Security Agency top-secret Sugar Grove Station.

“What else?” I’m asking Shannon.

“Your monthly chat with the governor at five o’clock, of course.”

“That will have to be rescheduled too,” I reply.

“She’ll be most disappointed.” What Shannon means is that the governor will be pissed. “No doubt she’ll be keen to discuss the Luna Briley case, for obvious reasons. Since the father is her enemy.”

“Not that I can discuss it anyway, but let her know I’ve been called out of town. Please give her my apologies,” I reply while glancing at a text from my sister.

Le Refuge tonight? 7:30 reservation? Will tell you ALL about my award-winning jackpot of a fab weekend! I could use a quiet evening with family and fine dining…, Dorothy writes.

“When people ask where you are, what shall I tell them?” Shannon continues surfing through her datebook, her zany pink reading glasses parked on the tip of her nose.

“You can say that I’m traveling to an area where there’s limited cell phone service,” I reply while answering Dorothy’s text.

I let her know that dinner can’t happen tonight. Marino and I are headed out of town on a case. She should know that already. But it’s clear he’s not informed her. They’re married and yet he expects me to pass along the message. What this tells me is they’re having a problem.

“You should be aware that Bug Off is here today at long last because of the problem we’ve been having in the vehicle bay.” Shannon continues to brief me.

“Bug Off?” The name isn’t familiar.

“One of the pest control companies on state contract.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It was recently added to the list of vendors. Meaning, it’s not the usual young fellow with strange eyes and poor posture who can’t get away from us fast enough when he bothers to show up. They sent a woman this time. She showed up without any notice and is scaring the bejesus out of me.” Shannon nods at live video on the security monitors.

The exterminator is in protective clothing, her head and face covered, a tank of pesticide strapped to her back. I notice right away that she’s not clipped to a safety tether. She must be forty feet off the ground, hanging on to a rung with one gloved hand, the other holding the spray gun. Then she’s fogging the nest, clouds of poison billowing up, the hornets frantic.

“It looks awfully dangerous, and I hope she doesn’t hurtle to her death in front of all of us.” Shannon’s brow is knitted into a worried frown as she watches. “Fancy having a job like that.”

“Tell her we’d really appreciate it if she takes care of the mosquito mitigation while she’s at it,” I suggest. “Someone should have sprayed for them weeks ago.”

“I’ve been calling since February. I’ll see what she can do while she’s here. Otherwise, who knows when anyone will be back,” Shannon says as her phone starts ringing again.

My secretary returns to her office as Marino walks into mine, dressed in field clothes, a pistol on his hip. He sets down two large Pelican cases that have wheels and retractable handles. They weigh at least fifty pounds each, his weathered face and shaved head flushed from exertion and shiny with sweat. It’s obvious that he took the stairs, the elevator topping his list of things that he’s sure will harm him.

“I’m afraid we have a long day ahead of us,” I tell him. “I hope you and Dorothy got some rest over your long weekend.”

“Not exactly,” he says sourly, and I’m not surprised.

They drove back to Alexandria this morning after three nights in Atlantic City, where my sister was presented with a prestigious social media influencer award. Marino isn’t a gambler and can think of better ways to waste money, he’ll tell you. Since the pandemic and proliferation of riots and mass murders, he dislikes crowds more than ever.

“Dorothy got lucky with the slot machines, lucky by her definition. I could hardly drag her away,” he reports. “Not to mention, the awards dinner went on forever. Then it was back to the casino until after midnight.”

“As long as you had quality time together and a change of scenery.”

“Atlantic City isn’t a change of scenery that I’m looking for. And who gives a shit about winning thousands of pennies?” Marino replies grumpily. “That was Sunday. Last night it was a Blues Brothers concert where she walked right up to Dan Aykroyd and asked him to autograph her onesie, which would have pissed me off if he’d been anybody else…”

I duck my head in Shannon’s office to the rapid clicking of her fingers on the keyboard. She has headphones on, typing at warp speed, and I signal that Marino and I are leaving.

“… After that it was a karaoke competition in a bar,” he’s telling me. “And Dorothy did her usual Cher impersonation, winning a whopping fifty bucks. We spent a hell of a lot more than that on drinks.”

“I think you’re well aware that my sister doesn’t do it for the money.” I shoulder my bags.

“Yeah, I know why she does it. If I didn’t before, I do now.”

“Your truck’s packed and ready to go?” I ask him.

“Got everything we need, including hazmat PPE and the Geiger counter. You mind telling me what the hell is going on? Be nice if I knew where we’re headed, and why we’re flying in sucky weather. Why are we flying at all? What’s the rush? Whoever died isn’t getting any deader.”

I pass along what I’ve been told so far, and he knows very well who Sal Giordano is but not who he was to me. Marino may recall that in our Richmond days I spent a summer teaching in Rome during a rocky time for me professionally. But I’ve never hinted at the rest of the story. He wouldn’t take it well.

“Sal Giordano’s been trying to make contact with ETs,” Marino is saying as we walk out of my office, and I lock the door. “He and the other SETI people have been sending signals all over the universe like they assume ETs are friendly. Well, what if all of them aren’t?”

“Saying something is a UAP simply means it’s not identifiable, and I suppose that could be a lot of things,” I reply.

“Some sightings are explainable. But others aren’t, and the reason we can’t identify them is because they weren’t made by us, the Chinese, the Russians or any other humans,” Marino says as if it’s beyond question. “There are nonhuman craft visiting us and it’s been going on forever.”

“We don’t know that such a thing was involved in Sal’s case,” I repeat as we follow the hallway.

“The fact that he was beamed up while driving and exposed to radiation? The fact that aliens probably experimented on him for hours, downloading everything in his brain? The fact that the craft left a crop circle and then vanished off the radar, back into outer space? You don’t find that pretty damn convincing, Doc?”

“Those aren’t facts.” The straps of my bags are digging into my shoulders.

“Not to mention he was left in Oz.”

“The theme park is owned by Ryder Briley, by the way.”

“You thinking he might have something to do with Sal Giordano being killed? Is that what Benton thinks?”

“Like the rest of us, he has more questions than answers at this point.”

“Just so you know, what Lucy described to you sounds a lot like other UAP encounters I’ve heard about. And it’s nothing new in that part of Virginia going back to the sixties when a spaceship landed near Staunton. Small beings were on board, the whole thing witnessed,” Marino explains as if it’s gospel.

“What was picked up this morning could have been an experimental aircraft that radar and other sensors didn’t recognize. It’s the same thing as our tox screens missing the newest designer drug or an odd one not included in the algorithm,” I suggest, the EXIT sign glowing red up ahead.

“Do you know if the UAP was shaped like a saucer, an orb, a triangle, maybe a cylinder? What else could they tell about it?”

“Not much, only that something was there.” I stop before the elevator’s closed stainless steel doors and his eyes widen as if I’m pointing a gun at him.

“Oh no we don’t!” he declares. “We’re not getting on this damn thing.”

My answer is to push the Down button.

“We need to take the stairs,” he insists.

“Sorry, not this time. I’ve got too much to carry,” I reply, the doors slowly twitching open.

“Damn death trap,” he grouses as we board, setting down the field cases. “It’s never worked worth a damn since we’ve been here and needs to be replaced.”

“I couldn’t agree more, but that will never happen.” I press the button for the ground floor, the doors stuttering shut. “Please be mindful that the exterminator’s here, and the hornets are riled up.”

“I kept my distance while I was loading my truck,” he says as the elevator begins descending slowly with a shudder. “Damn thing better not get stuck again!”

We creep past the second floor in fits and starts. Then the lights flicker, and the elevator comes to an abrupt halt.

“Dammit! I told you so!” His index finger jackhammers the lighted button. “One of these days we’re going to die in this thing! It’s going to crash or we’ll suffocate!”

“Why is it I seem to spend so much time calming down the men in this place?” I mutter.

“And of course, no signal in here.” Marino is fuming at his phone. “Not that calling anyone would do any good.”

The elevator begins moving again. Then we stop. And start again. Shakily reaching the morgue level. Halting abruptly. The door opening as if having a seizure.

“It was working fine when I got here this morning,” I tell him as we exit in a hurry.

Following the corridor, we near the evidence room, its observation windows offering a peek at the patients who pass through our sad clinic.

On the other side of the glass, gory personal effects labeled with case numbers are arranged on white-paper-covered exam tables. Along the back wall are multiple drying cabinets with transparent doors, everything destined for the labs upstairs.

“Those are hers.” I point out Luna Briley’s pink Barbie doll pajamas on a steel hanger. “Notice the blood pattern? In particular the blood drops on the anterior thigh area?”

Marino fogs up the window, peering at the small pajamas limp and stained reddish black.

“The drops are perfectly round,” he says. “They fell straight down, hitting her thighs at a ninety-degree angle. And that’s not possible if she was standing up like I’ve been hearing on the news. She had to be sitting.”

“And I think she was.”

“Supposedly, she was walking around in her bedroom, fooling with her father’s pistol, when it went off, explaining why her body was in the middle of the floor. The parents were outside in the yard when they heard the gunshot. Again supposedly.”

“That’s the same story they told me and probably everyone else,” I answer.

“Total bullshit, in other words.”

We’ve paused outside the x-ray room, black-and-white images illuminated on arrays of computer screens. I point out the tangential bullet hole in the frontal bone, multiple fractures radiating from it. The radiopaque shape of the small-caliber bullet is lodged at the back of the skull. I can see the gaps from missing baby teeth, and the shadows of permanent ones pushing through the gums.

“I believe when she was shot, she was in her pajamas sitting on top of the bedcovers watching TV, leaning against the headboard, her legs stretched out in front of her,” I explain. “I suspect that after the fact, the body was moved, the scene cleaned up and staged.”

“Any idea what might have precipitated the shooting?”

“I couldn’t tell you. We know she had lunch cooked on the grill. And she was eating something like M&M’s not long before she died, ones with peanuts,” I explain. “Her gastric contents are partially digested chicken and potato. But I also found the candy. And flecks of it were caught in her teeth, suggesting she ate it shortly before death.”

I explain that according to the parents, Luna had grilled barbecue chicken and French fries. They said she ate at one P.M. , and our office was notified of her death at around four-thirty.

“How long do you think she’d been dead by the time you got there?” Marino asks as we resume walking.

“Fabian and I pulled up close to five-fifteen, and by then she’d been dead several hours,” I reply as we reach the decomp room, the light bright red next to the windowless door.

My deputy chief, Doug Schlaefer, is autopsying what the cops call a floater, the badly decomposed body recovered from the Chesapeake Bay. According to witnesses, the victim fell off a boat several weeks ago while smoking crack cocaine and drinking heavily. The autopsy is being done in isolation because the stench is untenable.

“I don’t recall seeing an M&M-type candy wrapper in the bedroom or while the police were going through the kitchen trash,” I’m saying to Marino. “The question is where Luna got the candy.”

“Maybe she was sneaking something she wasn’t supposed to have, and Mom or Dad got pissed.”

“If she was diabetic as the parents claim, then she definitely wasn’t supposed to have candy,” I explain.

“Any insulin in the house?”

“When I asked Ryder Briley about it, he said they’d collect her medications and get them to me later. That they were too upset to do it then.” I envision the arrogance in his cold eyes. “He also said they didn’t keep sweets in the house.”

“So, what would happen if Luna ate sugar?” Marino asks.

“She could have gone into ketoacidosis and ended up in the hospital.”

“You try Bluestar around the bed in particular? Making sure Mom and Dad didn’t clean up the blood in there thinking we won’t figure it out?”

“Yes, and Fruge took video while I sprayed.”

We’re talking about a chemical reagent that causes nonvisible bloody residues to glow blue. The headboard, the walls, even the ceiling lit up, I explain.