Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 08 (19 page)

"And took the note to Reggie."

"That'd be right." He grinned, satisfied. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that valuable information would be lost forever if I strangled him. "Who gave you the note, Kevin?"

"Reggie Pellitory?"

"You delivered the note to Reggie Pellitory," I said, amazed that I could speak through clenched teeth. "Where did you get it?"

"Oh, yeah, I guess I got confused what with all your questions. Jim Bob gave me the note, Arly."

For a paralytic moment I felt as I'd switched brains with Kevin because all I could do was stare at him with what must have been a truly idiotic expression. "Jim Bob Buchanon?"

"That'd be the only Jim Bob I know. It was awful good of him to give me back my old job, wasn't it? I dint have much luck selling those fancy vacuum cleaners, but I -- "

"He's a prince." I went back to the car and drove down the hill to the highway, my thoughts as twitchy as the needle on the speedometer. Jim Bob Buchanon? If he'd actually seen a spacecraft in the woods, why on earth would he pay Reggie fifty dollars to take a cryptic note to Dr. Sageman when all he had to do was tell him? If for some obscure reason Jim Bob had felt the need for anonymity, why hadn't he made a muffled telephone call or slid the note under the door himself?

Hizzoner had demanded a report as soon as possible. I was going to obey orders, but only after a brief detour by the PD to fake a little evidence.

"What's taking Arly so long?" Ruby Bee muttered as she wiped her hands on a dish towel and hung it on a hook. Noon had come and gone, and only a few tourists were still polishing off the last crumbs of piecrust or dawdling over coffee.

Estelle craned her neck to make sure no one was near enough to eavesdrop, then said, "We don't know for sure what we found means anything. There could be a perfectly reasonable explanation. Besides, what's Arly gonna say when you admit we searched the units? You know how poorly she takes it when we go out of our way to help her."

"Who could forget?" Ruby Bee was gonna say more when Jules Channel came across the dance floor and sat down on a stool midway down the bar. He was wearing a white sweater that Ruby Bee would have bet was cashmere; it made a nice contrast with his tan and emphasized the whiteness of his teeth. It occurred to her that she hadn't gotten around to inquiring about his marital status.

"Too late for lunch?" he asked.

Ruby Bee gave him a menu. "How'd you make out with Sheriff Dorfer?"

"He wasn't there. I suppose I'll go back tomorrow morning and see what I can find out about these cattle mutilations." Jules paused delicately, then added, "You don't know anything about them, do you?"

"Of course we do," said Estelle. "The dispatcher, LaBelle, is one of my regulars, and she sez the sheriff's about to rip out what hair he's got left. The lab down in Little Rock is swamped with more important things -- like Brian Quint's autopsy -- and may not get around to examining the tissue samples until the end of next week."

"Oh." Jules resumed his study of the menu.

Ruby Bee wasn't sure, but she thought she saw a little smile on his face. She was beginning to get disillusioned with the two tabloid reporters. First Lucy Fernclift had accused Estelle (and Ruby Bee, by proxy) of lying about the alien at Boone Creek. Now Jules Channel was smirking like he'd heard a dirty joke. It seemed downright hypocritical to write stories about mermaids and naked Pentecostals, then make fun of folks that were as honest as the day was long.

"So," she said casually, fixing to work the conversation around to that very issue before she wasted any time exploring his eligibility, "how long have you worked for the Weekly Examiner?"

"A year or so." He ordered the special and coffee, still smiling to himself, then said, "I'd like to interview both of you about what you saw last night. I'd also like to take some photographs of you pointing at the creek. The actual spot's liable to be off-limits, but we can find someplace else with similar characteristics."

Estelle had seen the smile, too. "And lie about it? It seems to me there are folks visiting Maggody right this minute that don't mind that a one whit. Maybe that goes with living in a big city. Around these parts we may not be college graduates, but we believe in sticking to the truth -- for the most part anyway."

"So I've noticed," Jules said, turning serious. "Ladies, I truly believe you saw something last night and you weren't exaggerating." He leaned forward and, in a voice barely audible, added, "But I think Dr. Sageman is behind it."

"You do?" whispered Ruby Bee. At the end of the bar Estelle was too stunned to say much of anything.

"Yes, I do. Even though I work for a tabloid, I'm still an investigative reporter. I want to get to the bottom of this as much as you, and I want to know what happened to Brian Quint." He sat back up and shrugged. "The problem is, my hands are tied. Whenever I approach Sageman, all I get is a restatement of his dogma that we're being visited by extraterrestrials. He's not fooling me, though; I'm convinced he knows more than he's telling us."

Estelle abandoned her stool and moved next to Jules. "He told me that there was a government conspiracy," she said breathlessly. "It goes all the way back to the late 1940s, when a flying saucer crashed in New Mexico and the military hushed it up. The day after the crash was reported, men from a nearby army air force base came and loaded up all the scraps. Then an officer announced that it was nothing but a weather balloon."

"He also said that ever since then," contributed Ruby Bee, "the government has been collecting debris from crashes -- along with alien corpses -- and keeping them in an underground laboratory out in the desert."

Jules shook his head wonderingly. "Sageman told you this? I'm really surprised, since ... "

"Since what?" demanded Ruby Bee and Estelle, not precisely in unison but damn close to it.

"He works for military intelligence. I can't divulge my sources, but I was told by a Pentagon official that Sageman is on a top secret commission that investigates UFOs and reports directly to the President." Jules glanced around the barroom to make sure no one with a cloak and dagger was lurking in the shadows. "This underground facility does exist. The workmen who built it were told that they and their families would suffer if they ever admitted knowledge of it, but I found a painter who was willing to talk. One day he got off the elevator on the wrong floor and saw what at first he thought was a regular hospital nursery with incubator lights and cribs. Then he realized the inhabitants were small gray humanoids with black, almond-shaped eyes."

"Like what we saw," said Ruby Bee. She had to lean back and fan herself with a menu as she imagined a whole room filled with aliens.

"What we saw wasn't small," protested Estelle. "We both agreed it was seven feet tall."

"These," Jules whispered, "were children." He waited for them to gasp, which they did, then went on. "Sageman is one of the masterminds of the conspiracy. His assignment is to provide disinformation to the public and at the same time destabilize and discredit the UFO movement. If people dismiss all these sightings as craziness, they won't demand to know the truth."

Ruby Bee was fanning herself so vigorously her hair was standing on end. Estelle wasn't doing much better; she tried to take a swallow of sherry, but most of it dribbled down her chin as she stared at Jules.

Smelling their fear, he went in for the kill. "I've suspected this for a long time, but I found proof when I took the job at the Weekly Examiner. My editor receives a certain sum of money from the Pentagon for every story about a saucer or a close encounter. Do you remember the stories during the campaign about a goofy alien that was photographed with the major candidates? I got a thousand-dollar bonus for each of them. The one about the President's wife adopting an alien infant was worth twice that."

"Oh, my gawd," said Ruby Bee, who remembered every word of the story because there had been an actual artist's depiction of the alien baby, and it reminded her of her second cousin's son (who'd been expelled from grade school three times and dropped out all together when he was nine).

Estelle managed to swallow some sherry this time. "Why don't you write a story and expose the conspiracy? You could give it to one of the real newspapers or even a television show."

"I need hard evidence," he said. "What's so frustrating is I know where to get it, but not how. Sageman keeps everything on computer disks, from dates and numbers to the reports the Majestic Twelve commission submits to the President, and he never goes anywhere without them. If I could get my hands on those disks for even a few hours, I'd take the information to every legitimate news source in the country and force the government to tell us what's going on -- before it's too late."

Ruby Bee was having a hard time catching her breath as she tried to sort out what he'd said. It was one thing to listen to Dr. Sageman and Dr. McMasterson bickering about whether the aliens were coming down from the sky or up from the ocean. Dahlia's declaration in the back booth -- well, it'd made for some interesting discussion afterward. Even what she'd seen with her own two eyes didn't make any sense. But the man sitting right across from her had proof that UFOs existed and the aliens had made contact.

"Too late?" gasped Estelle.

"Too late to save our civilization," Jules said dolefully. "What if they've come to enslave us? They have a superior intellect and the technology to travel faster than the speed of light. They haven't come here to learn from us; they've come for their own dark purposes." He put aside the menu and stood up, his face scrunched up with pain and his eyes glittery with tears. "I've lost my appetite. Maybe I'll take a drive and enjoy my freedom while I can. It won't be long before ... we may not be able to do that anymore." He trudged heavily toward the door, encumbered by the incipient shackles of slavery.

Ruby Bee's knees were so wobbly she had to grab the edge of the bar to steady herself. "Wait, Mr. Channel. Maybe I can help you."

He hesitated, then turned around. "I don't see what you can do, Ruby Bee. Unless I have access to Sageman's computer files, we're doomed. It's just as well I never had any children; the thought of them toiling in underground mines on a planet lightyears away, bred like cattle, living lives of quiet desperation" -- his voice cracked -- "It's too horrible to bear."

"You said Dr. Sageman travels with all his computer files. I straightened up his room earlier today. He'd moved the furniture around to use the table as a desk. It's a real mess, but next to the computer I noticed a pile of flat plastic squares." She formed a rough shape with her thumbs and forefingers to demonstrate the size. "Would those be what you're talking about?"

"They might be," Jules said as he came back to the bar and reached over it to squeeze her shoulder.

Estelle felt obliged to contribute to the salvation of the planet. "I looked more carefully while Ruby Bee made the beds and cleaned the bathroom. There was a thick pile of that paper with holes along the margins. I didn't have time to do more than glance at it, but what I read had to do with the size and arrangement of crop circles in Raz's field."

"Were there labels on the disks?" Jules asked, staring at her.

Now that she had his full attention, Estelle took her time recalling the scene. "Most of them had stickers with dates or names written on them. I didn't find one that said Maggody, but it may have been in the computer."

One of the women in the first booth was looking at them as if she could hear every word. Ruby Bee went over to the jukebox, dropped in a quarter, and punched the handiest button. An adenoidal wail filled the room as she came back and said, "I reckon I could let you in Dr. Sageman's room. I'll have to go with you, of course, since it's my motel and I have an obligation to my guests -- even if they're government agents. One of these days Arly might get around to having babies, and I don't aim to see my grandchildren end up as slaves." She realized Estelle was glowering hard enough to melt wax candles. "You can be the lookout," she said to her in a spurt of generosity.

"When?" demanded Jules.

"I don't know," she said. "We'll have to think of a way to make sure he's out of his room long enough for you to make copies or whatever you need to do."

The three settled down to discuss their strategy as someone in Nashville bemoaned the loss of his truck, his dawg, his Job, and his woman (in that order).

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I made sure my badge was nice and shiny before I knocked on Hizzoner's front door. I was hoping to have a private conversation with him, but Mizzoner opened the door and regarded me with what can only be described as ill-concealed panic.

"What?" she shrieked, shrinking into the hallway as if I were accompanied by a gang of glassy-eyed children from The Village of the Damned.

It was not the warmest reception I'd ever had, but rather than worry about it, I said, "I'm sorry if I'm interrupting your dinner, but I need to speak to Jim Bob."

Her mouth tightened until her lips were invisible. After a quick glance over her shoulder she came out onto the porch and closed the door behind her. "You don't have any call to speak to him. He's been working hard all week and deserves to rest on the seventh day, just like the Bible says. If you'd attend church more often, you'd be familiar with the notion."