Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 08 (8 page)

Suddenly the light vanished, although this hardly shut up all the folks lined up at the fence. The man with the silver hair ordered his assistant to climb through the fence and run down the hillside. Some of the others followed suit, stumbling into one another and sprawling out headlong into the corn.

"Well, I swear," said Ruby Bee, who'd opted to stay right where she was, thank you very much. "Look right up there, Estelle. There's a blinking light, and it's going real fast. You think -- "

"It sure is zipping away," Estelle said thoughtfully. "It could be going a thousand miles an hour, maybe more."

Dahlia finally spotted what they were talking about. There was a light, all right, blinking and everything. She dint know how they could tell how fast it was going, but they seemed real certain. Then a most terrible realization liked to slap her silly: Sure as God made little green apples she'd seen this light before.

Her blood turned cold, and her mouth dried up like someone had stuffed cotton in it. She was what that reporter had said. It took her a minute to come up with the word, but when she did, there was something deep inside her that fluttered like a duck. She, Dahlia née O'Neill Buchanon, was an abductee.

Was she having their baby?

CHAPTER FIVE

"Where were you last night?" Ruby Bee demanded as she burst into the PD. Her face was flushed, but I wasn't alarmed. Everything and everybody in town had turned downright weird these last two days. Only in Maggody can the abnormal so quickly become the norm. "I must have called here and over at your apartment two dozen times!" she continued shrilly, looming over my desk to jab her finger at the insidious red light. "Look at that infernal answering machine of yours! It's blinking so hard it's liable to explode."

"I went to a movie in Farberville last night. I haven't gotten around to listening to you complain about how much you dislike talking to my answering machine. Has it ever occurred to you that you can just hang up and -- "

"Don't start mouthing off at me, missy. I came all the way over here to tell you about the alien that landed by Raz Buchanon's field last night, but I can see you're a sight too busy reading a tabloid to pay any attention to the very woman who walked the floor with you night and day for five months on account of colic and -- "

"Okay!" I put the Weekly Examiner in the bottom drawer, rocked back in my chair, and arranged my feet on the corner of the desk. "Go ahead and tell me all about the alien. Maybe I'll write up a report and send it over to Harve Dorfer so he'll have fresh reading material for the john. It might come in handy if they run short of toilet paper.

Her jaw flapped for a while, but she finally got hold of herself and sat down in the chair across from me. "If you make one more wisecrack, you're gonna find yourself eating canned soup for a month of Sundays."

"So tell me," I said meekly. Five minutes later, after she'd run out of hyperbole, I said, "Let me get this straight: You and other witnesses heard a bang across the creek, then saw a light and something white and shiny. Afterward you saw another light receding in the sky. Does that sum it up?" There may have been a sarcastic tinge to my voice, but I was keeping a remarkably straight face, all things considered. Canned soup was one of them.

"Ain't you gonna go investigate before folks start trampling on the evidence?"

"Investigate what? You just said these mysterious lights vanished."

Ruby Bee stood up. "You just trot yourself down to Boone Creek and have a look. I suggest you do it before you show up at the bar and grill to beg for a free lunch. The special today is meat loaf and fried okra."

I was still gaping at her as she sailed out the door. "Manipulative" was much too mild a word for Ruby Bee, but I couldn't think of one that captured her talent. Besides, we're not real fond of five syllable words in Maggody. I was still working on it ("dictatorial" had the same syllable count, but "bossy" had promise) when the telephone rang. Secure in the knowledge Ruby Bee was in transit, I picked up the receiver.

What I heard was not heartening. My cornstalk had been examined at the agri department lab at Farber College. Thus far nothing had been found, not even one wee little corn borer or hint of smut. Nobody was giving up yet, but it wasn't likely that I'd end up with a tidy explanation anytime soon.

In the meantime, Maggody had just entertained its very first extraterrestrial. I dutifully listened to the messages on the answering machine, all of which were from Ruby Bee and pretty much incoherent. I then grabbed a notebook and drove out to the north end of town. Both sides of the road were lined with cars and trucks, some familiar and some with out-of-state license plates and bumper stickers extolling exotic locales like Mount Rushmore and Six Flags over Texas. The van from the local television station had appropriated the prime parking place. I left my car behind the old Esso station, scrambled down the slope to the creek, and headed upstream, following the babbling of voices rather than that of the brook.

Damned if they hadn't started the investigation without me. The woman reporter was speaking into the camera, this time sounding like a Methodist minister at a funeral. Beyond her were a good-size number of gawkers constrained by a droopy strip of yellow tape. Ruby Bee was not among them, but Estelle was relating her version of the "dadburn most incredible thing" she'd ever seen in all her born days, even counting the time she went to Noow Yark City. Her audience, which included Jules Channel (whose most recent by-lines were "My Dog Was Sucked Through the Ozone Hole!" and "Ship-wrecked Missionary Ate His Own Liver to Survive!"), appeared to be impressed, although her story seemed pale in comparison to his. I didn't recognize anyone inside the secured area, but I'd heard enough gossip to have an idea who they were. I brushed past Estelle and stepped over the tape.

"Please don't come any further!" snapped a young blond man. "We must protect the sanctity of the site."

"The scene of the crime, so to speak?" I said as I let him have a clear view of my badge. "It seems to me that'd be my job. I'm Chief of Police Arly Hanks."

"I'm Brian Quint. The gentleman over there is Arthur Sageman, director of the ETH Research Foundation in California. Dr. Sageman is the world's foremost authority on extraterrestrial encounters."

I spotted a silver-haired man on his knees near the edge of the water, measuring something with a ruler. His mouth was pursed with concentration, and his eyebrows were racing back and forth like copulating caterpillars. "Is that so?" I drawled. "How convenient that he happened to be in town in time for our very first visitor from outer space."

"We came yesterday because of the crop circle configurations. Dr. Sageman is convinced they're the result of alien interaction."

"Aliens are interacting with Maggody, Arkansas?" I said as I searched Brian Quint's eyes for that tattletale glint. His skin was very light and unblemished, his hair so blond it was almost white, his features indistinct. His pale blue eyes seemed innocent enough, but I wasn't ready to make a judgment concerning his lucidity or lack thereof. If nothing else, he was from California. That automatically made him suspect.

Before he could respond, a man with a much more pronounced glint joined us. "I'm Dr. Hayden McMasterson, the director of the Foundation for ITH Research in Taos. I too came to investigate the crop circle configurations. Rest assured that they are not caused by any visitors from outer space, Chief Hanks. The idea is preposterous. Self-proclaimed authorities like Arthur Sageman are so enamored of their pet theories that they are blind to simple physical evidence."

"Good morning, Hayden," Brian said with a sigh.

I blinked at McMasterson. "Exactly what physical evidence are we talking about?"

"Brian!" shouted Sageman. "Mix the plaster so that we can make a cast. This is an excellent footprint, by far the most highly defined."

McMasterson rumbled angrily. "See what I mean? He finds a footprint and assumes it's of extraterrestrial origin. He sees a flattened expanse and a charred circle and starts hypothesizing about the dimensions of the spacecraft. Last night he observed a light in the sky and announced it to be the departure of said craft. It was nothing more than an airplane, naturally. Arthur is overly enamored of his quaint little findings, as well as secretive. Had he shared the name of his witness when he reinvestigated the Roswell incident, I could have told him she was a nut. Arthur has even lied in order to conceal evidence from his fellow investigators."

I wondered if I'd been wrong about the glint, even though he had a ponytail and was wearing a turtleneck sweater and a gold earring in his left ear. "When I heard about all this, " I said, "I presumed there'd be some logical explanations. My only witness is on the excitable side, and her credibility's not worth a plug nickel."

"Let me give you my card," he said with a warm smile, stopping short of patting me on the head but coming dangerously close to it. I do not care to be mistaken for a sheepdog. "I can see you're a sensible young woman. The others are prone to hysteria, and the level of suggestibility last night was higher than the maligned airplane. It's encouraging to know that we won't be having any premature statements from the authorities."

I tucked his card in my back pocket and went over to the edge of the creek, where a huddle had formed. Brian was stirring a batch of plaster in a plastic pail. Two women were hovering nearby. One gave me a frown; the other waggled her fingers and giggled. I surmised they were the women from Little Rock.

"It's eighteen and one-half inches in length," Sageman intoned as if he were measuring the Ark of the Covenant, "and almost five inches at the widest point. The treadmarks are bizarre and unlike anything I've ever seen."

I peered over his shoulder at the footprint. There was no doubt that it was large; I could have put both of my feet in it. The treadmarks looked ordinary, but I was hardly an expert in that field. "Dr. Sageman," I said, "I'm Arly Hanks, the -- "

"Brian, is the plaster beginning to set? There are rain clouds approaching, and it is vital to preserve the evidence for further study. Cynthia, do you have an adequate number of photographs of all pertinent manifestations?"

"The chief of police, Dr. Sageman," I continued with only the faintest exasperation in my voice. "The town council promised that all the evidence discovered within the city limits belongs to me. Most of the time it's dog poop or broken glass, but it's still mine and mine alone. Furthermore -- "

He glanced up, clearly annoyed at my persistence. "Yes, but you have no experience in what well may become classified as a close encounter of the second kind. That's defined as detailed observation without actual contact. You're not equipped to deal with an extraterrestrial biological entity, are you?"

I wanted to tell him that all the years spent with the Buchanon clan had equipped me to deal with the whole gamut of biological entities, but the crowd was straining against the tape, and the television camera was aimed in our direction. Grumbling, I stepped aside and waited until Brian made a plaster cast of the footprint. "Okay, Dr, Sageman," I said, trying once again to be civil, "the evidence is preserved. If you don't mind, I'd like to -- "

He stood up and spoke to the whirring camera. "I believe that we have categorical proof of alien interaction in this location. The list of witnesses to last night's encounter continues to grow as we conduct individual interviews. Within a matter of hours I shall be in a position to make a statement as to the validity of the incident."

"We'll have an update at six and again at ten," said the reporter. "And cut. Can we count on you to come to the studio tomorrow afternoon, Dr. Sageman? I'd like to do indepth interviews with you and Dr. McMasterson, say, three minutes each, and then allow the two of you to exchange opinions regarding the possibility that an alien was at this spot last night."

Sageman pointed a trembling finger at McMasterson. "Under no circumstances will I participate in an exchange with this euhemeristic pseudo-intellectual who relies on psychosociological gibberish to discredit those of us -- "

McMasterson bristled to the tip of his ponytail. "No more than I would deign to appear on any show with this pontificating, underhanded, dishonorable -- "

"How dare you!" roared Sageman as he flung himself across the gravel bar and began to choke the living daylights out of McMasterson. The victim responded with kidney punches and a string of expletives unfamiliar to most of his audience. They careened around the gravel bar in a grotesque dance, annihilating the footprint as well as any reservations I had concerning their sanity.

It took awhile, but eventually Brian, the cameraman, and I pulled the combatants apart.

I stepped between them. "Listen up, I don't care if you two decide to meet at dawn with pistols, but you are not going to pull this shit while you're on my turf. You don't have to kiss and make up or even shake hands. However, I can run you into the county jail for disorderly conduct, and you'll find yourselves in a lot less cultivated company until the judge shows up Monday morning. Do we all understand?"

Sageman and McMasterson stalked away in opposite directions. The reporter and cameraman left, as did the majority of the crowd. Once I'd decided the two men were under control for the time being, I went over to Jules Channel, who was sitting on a log with his notebook on his knee and a distinctly amused expression on his face. If I hadn't been such a trusting soul, I might have wondered if he'd enjoyed the fracas.