Jynx and Austin watched the family with the camping gear-laden Subaru as they climbed back into their car. The two truckers were already paying up by the time they got inside. The Silver Spoon was mostly empty except for a few guys sitting with Mr. Vickers in a corner booth. “Are you guys closed?” Austin asked, “Ashley had to run an errand, but she told us to meet her here.”
“Oh, I’m sure Hitch can handle one last burger and a grilled cheese,” Lisa smiled wanly, although she had last seen Hitch rolling a joint from the nug jar Terrence left in his locker. Helping herself to a margarita-flavored wine cooler when she was at the beverage station, Lisa dropped a coke, a lemonade, a stale milk bone, and a couple of paper-wrapped straws on the table as she swung past to drop the check at Mr. Vickers’s table.
Jynx didn’t pull the tablet from her bag when they sat down. Instead, she held her phone out in front of her, pretending to be texting or checking her media while watching the casual cop and his friends interrogate her science teacher. Sir Pugsley, knowing this behavior well, did two full rotations before settling into a puddle beside her. She pulled the paper sleeve off her straw and swirled the straw around in her drink five times before taking her first sip but didn’t take her eyes off the corner table. On her second pass, Lisa brought plates quick enough that Austin checked to make sure his burger wasn’t raw. Jynx gnawed the crusts off her sandwich like a raccoon, pausing periodically to feed Sir Pugsley another fry. At least feeding the dog kept her from staring off at the corner table intently. “I’m telling you, Austin. Those guys are looking for it.”
Austin glanced over his shoulder at the collection of old guys in the big booth. They didn’t exactly look like the sort of guys that might be hunting for a saucer, more like a collection of nerds that crawled out of their basements after a few decades of ongoing D&D games. He recognized the guy in shorts and a T-shirt from the other day. He was there to get his Crown Vic fixed. Jeremiah said he was a cop of some sort, but he didn’t look like the sort to scan a HAM radio for signals from space. He looked more like the sort to scan the dashboard radio for ska music. If they’d been looking for the saucer, they would have spotted it on the back of the flatbed and spared them all the issue of Jeremiah looking to make a buck. “You know Vickers is into some weird science stuff. Maybe those guys are with one of the labs he used to work for.”
“That guy is staring at us.” Jynx slid deeper into her seat, chewing through the recently de-crusted bottom half of her grilled cheese. Sir Pugsley, waiting for another fry, snorted indignantly.
Austin glanced over his shoulder again. The guy in the board shorts nodded severely at him, looking overly serious for his beachwear. Austin nodded back. He was definitely a cop, but Austin couldn’t think of any laws they might have broken by unearthing the saucer. Jeremiah said that there were salvage rights of some sort, sort of a legal “finders keepers, losers weepers” policy on trash in the wash. Even if they did want the thing, Austin and Jynx got to it first. “Well, Mr. Vickers doesn’t look too happy, that’s for sure.”
Jynx watched her math and science teacher squirm under their scrutiny and wondered if they were questioning him because of his museum. She’d never been there, but then, until a few days prior, she had never given flying saucers and space aliens much thought. He might be someone to ask, but she didn’t know how to go about it without tipping him off. If he knew what she had, he would find a way to take it from her. She slouched deeper into the booth. When the big guy in shorts glanced over again, she tried to stare at Austin instead, but then had to check again, in case the guy was still looking at her.
Austin wiped ketchup off his cheek with a napkin but didn’t look up from his phone. “Stop staring at them, Jynx. You’re going to freak them out.”
Jynx repeatedly stabbed a French fry into her ketchup and chomped the end off as Sir Pugsley watched. He snorted in protest, but she was still staring at the other table. “They’re freaking me out, Austin.”
* * *
While the chief and Dr. Vickers begrudgingly argued over who should pay the bill, O’Connor watched the kids from the tow company with a little pug dog. The little girl seemed about as timid as a squirrel, shying away to hide behind the other tow truck driver. She took her seat and slid into the booth, ducking down slightly. Aside from being a scrawny kid, she didn’t look like a junkie. She didn’t have the pocked face or scab-picked arms, but she did seem paranoid, stealing side-eyed glances at their booth. If he already thought that the desert was lousy with tweakers, these two strung-out kids weren’t helping. They seemed so young. O’Connor assumed that it must be boredom. Nothing to do in a tiny little town. Naturally, they turned to drugs.
Having seen Dr. Vickers to his minivan, the Tiggers loaded up in the Tahoe feeling satisfied enough, but glad that they’d gotten the discounted price, anyway. If the owner was some sort of chef like the menu described, he was taking his secrets to the grave with him, or at least not sharing them with the morning and afternoon shifts. The burgers were fine, but somewhat lackluster, even by truckstop dining standards.
“He’s full of shit, Chief.” I mean, maybe he saw something when he was a kid, and his brother laying catatonic for sixty freakin’ years is pretty convincing, but a guy with a flying saucer museum just happens to find one buried in his backyard? I find that a little suspect.”
Martinez nodded mechanically as he pulled onto the highway, increasingly bored with the entire situation. If bringing Paulson along was a bad idea, sending O’Connor to secure the site was his first big mistake. By now, the site would be scrubbed clean of any radioactive residue, and there was little that McGoohan could do for them besides swing around the site a few times looking for infrared jackrabbit signals.
“And then somehow,” O’Connor muttered, “a few days before we roll in to investigate, it just happens to fly off again? Really!?”
“Those LIDAR images were convincing enough to get the cavalry out here, Sergeant.” He watched for the entrance to the Starlight Motor Inn, eyeing the handful of big, black Escalades cruising up and down the highway like they might be going door to door. “I doubt very much that the commissioner would mobilize a top-secret SWAT team for a handful of doctored images.”
“You don’t think he called them in himself?”
“Not likely.” Martinez pulled into the Starlight parking lot and gently eased it into a spot near the staircase. “He doesn’t like you much; and even less now, I’m guessing. He would have leveraged them if they were in his pocket.”
“Yeah, not much of a poker face on that guy.”
“You know,” Paulson interjected from the backseat, “the worst kind of liar is the sort that actually believes what they are lying about.” He chuckled.
“You think he called in the stormtroopers?”
Mr. Paulson shook his head. “That’s obviously a leak in the chain of custody. I doubt very much that Vickers or his little LIDAR photographer friend took much care in maintaining encryption protocols.”
O’Connor smiled at the chief. “Nobody sends real Top-Secret files through FedEx, right?”
Paulson chuckled. “You might be surprised how easy it is to access information sent to and from supposedly classified low-level government contractors.” He chuckled again.
Martinez grit his teeth at the phrase.
“So, what do you think Dr. Vickers is lying about?” O’Connor asked.
“Well, take the most devout believers in any other religion, for example.”
“What does this have to do with religion?” Martinez asked.
“Mysterious unseen superterrestrial beings with a science so advanced that it is incomprehensible to humanity? There are already sects of the populace who worship the extraterrestrial mythos with a near-religious fanaticism. Tell me that our own Dr. Vickers doesn’t crave the redemption of the missing artifact like it was a sacred object.”
Martinez grumbled indignantly. “Easy, there.” Even if he wasn’t a practicing Catholic anymore, he still made it to mass a few times a year.
“Your own man, Levy, truly believes that supplying you with evidence of aliens, real or imagined, is the key to saving your organization from a potential budget cut by your commissioner, so much so that he’s called you not less than twenty times since I have been with you. I have no doubt that if you contacted him, the irrefutable evidence would vanish without explanation, just at the moment of revelation.”
Martinez and O’Connor glanced at each other. Neither wanted to bring up the extent of Levy’s Adderall habit, but there was a decent chance that Levy truly believed that he was seeing little green men running around the shop, even as he was popping his little orange pills.
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O’Connor rolled his eyes. “Levy’s not even an investigator, Paulson. He’s a glorified electrician.” He leaned back in his seat, wishing that this pencil pusher would just stick to his accounting. “And thanks to budget cuts, he’s the only mechanic we have left to keep our fleet running.”
“He was a promising quantum computing doctoral candidate who now has a vested interest in maintaining his position with your organization. He’s also pretty active on the message boards, discussing conspiracy theory.” Paulson shrugged. “It is the key tenet of the conspiracy enthusiasts that complete lack of proof is all the proof they need of the extent of the cover-up, same as most major faiths with regards to their divine mystery. Every religious zealot believes that they follow the one true god, and all others are false. Apply that same logic to your alien cover-up conspiracies. How far would Levy be willing to go just to keep his research going?”
As a general rule, Martinez preferred to keep his personal beliefs separate from his professional life, but Paulson stomped straight across that line in the sand. He adjusted the mirror to get a better look at the scrawny auditor. “I’m not sure that I like you comparing these new-age alien nutjobs and conspiracy theorists with your average Sunday churchgoer. Occasionally attending mass isn’t the same as chasing blinky lights in the sky or claiming that the earth is flat.”
Paulson chuckled. “But you’ve devoted more than two decades of your life to investigating extraterrestrial activity.” The auditor slid his briefcase into his lap and folded his hands in front of him, addressing them from his miniature desk. “It’s your job, Martinez. You get paid to believe in aliens, and so you do. Nobody pays you to believe in Jesus, but if I walked into a Presbyterian church and told them all, without a shadow of a doubt that Jesus of Nazareth looked more Arab than Anglo, I would get murdered in his name before I made it to the parking lot.” He smiled perfunctorily at the pair in the front seat. “Because these people are true believers, and willing to go to great lengths to prove themselves right.” He stared straight into the mirror, pan-faced and uncharacteristically serious. “I’m going to grab some snacks. You guys want anything out of the vending machine?”
Martinez and O’Connor exchanged glances.
“Alright, then.” The auditor slid out the door, strolling towards the vending and ice machines, briefcase swinging casually at his side.
“I don’t like him very much,” O’Connor muttered while they watched Paulson plugging dollars into the vending machine.
“I have a funny feeling that you’re not alone.”
The Sergeant pulled his Sig Sauer from under the seat and reached for the door handle. “Now he’s just insulting us.”
Martinez locked the door before O’Connor could climb out. “I need you to take it easy, Sergeant. Let’s not burn the house to the ground just to kill a rat, you know?”
O’Connor grumbled, watching the auditor punch buttons for another snack.
“Do you understand, Sergeant?”
While he could understand the chief’s concern when he pulled his piece from under the seat, he wasn’t about to pop a cap in Paulson just because the pencil-neck wasn’t a big fan of old-time religion. “Yes, sir.” He stuffed the pistol into his beltline before Martinez would release the lock button.
“Let’s just tie up the loose ends, get your cruiser out of the shop, and we’ll see what the commissioner has to say about all this when the review board finishes up, alright?”
O’Connor nodded begrudgingly. “Well, I’m going to pop into the lounge for a minute to see if I can wash this taste out of my mouth and work us up a discount on tomorrow’s breakfast as well.”
“Mary?” Martinez reminded him.
“Just flirting, Chief. I’m not going to go trying to get us all free meals for the duration.”
The chief shook his head. “How benevolent of you.”
Paulson stood at the bottom of the concrete stairs, snacking on a bag of ranch-flavored Corn Nuts and staring at them.
“I really don’t like that guy,” O’Connor muttered as he slid out of the passenger’s side door.
Paulson tilted the tiny snack pack towards them both and raised his eyebrows, offering them a sample.
“Well, he seems to like you.” Martinez shrugged.
Paulson waited for him, offering a selection of snacks.
“Señor Martinez!” The front desk auditor called as they started up the steps. “A package arrived for your room, addressed to a señor Paulson?” Martinez glanced up at Mr. Paulson, who appeared only moderately impressed but did not immediately identify himself to the desk clerk.
“Yeah, okay.” Martinez nodded. Does he need to sign for it or anything?”
The clerk shook his head. “No, but it is very heavy, and I did not want to leave it outside your door, just in case.” Lifting the box to the countertop, the clerk grunted. Wrapped in brown paper with plain white shipping labels, it looked like the sort of discreet packaging offered by adult sex toy companies. The package was heavy, whatever it was. Paulson chuckled to himself. Without putting down his briefcase, he awkwardly lifted the box, clinging to the heavy package without uttering a word of thanks or asking for any assistance, he fumbled backward against the rental office door, spilling himself out onto the sidewalk and stumbling up the stairs. Agent Martinez thanked the clerk.
Straight in the door, Mr. Paulson slid his package onto the little table in the room, pushing the various pamphlets and tourist guides out of the way. He pulled some sort of box knife from his jacket pocket, cut the plain brown tape that sealed the box, and opened it. Even though the chief was standing right there, Mr. Paulson swept the box and Styrofoam packing peanuts off the table, allowing the packing peanuts to spill all over the floor. He set the duffel bag on the table, and furtively glanced behind him, to ensure that Martinez couldn’t see the contents, unzipped it, and rifled through it like a raccoon digging through trash.
Mr. Paulson pulled a power tool battery and charger from the duffel bag and plugged the cord into the wall, checking to see that the little LED lights were working satisfactorily. Pleased that they were, he hung his suit coat on the back of a chair and kicked his shoes off to expose his stinking, holey socks. He set his briefcase beside the bed and lay down with his feet crossed at the ankle, ready to watch some basic cable until the chief fell asleep or asphyxiated from the stench of dirty socks.
“Dulce madre de dios, Mr. Paulson. This place stinks!” Martinez swung the front door wide, attempting to air out two days’ worth of bachelor flophouse funk.
“It could be worse,” Mr. Paulson said, an insidious smirk spreading on his unnervingly ambivalent countenance. “It could be a lot worse.” He began to chuckle to himself.
Chief Martinez decided it might be a good idea to drop the subject entirely.
* * *
Ashley didn’t show up at the Spoon for nearly an hour, but she hadn’t bothered to order her pie ahead of time, so it was possible that she wasn’t in much of a rush. Nonetheless, she came into the parking lot hot, scraping her ground effects over the corner of the curb and kicking up sparks at the speed bump. The glass pack growled once, just to slow her roll, and just barely audible over the consummate '50s music playing, but enough to grab the kids’ attention. Quietly idling in neutral, she coasted to the far end of the lot and around the corner to park behind the restaurant. For whatever reason, Ash had decided to go full stealth again.
A few moments later Austin and Jynx heard shouts and cheers from the kitchen and one of the missing cooks ran out of the kitchen, dashing the restrooms. Ashley slipped into the restaurant from the kitchen. With her hood up and her sunglasses on, she crossed the dining area at a partial crouch looking infinitely more conspicuous for the effort. She crammed Austin back into the booth and huddled low beside him, blending into the banal scene in a bright pink hoodie. “What in the hell is wrong with you two? Both of you are acting guilty as hell about something or other, the sheriff is asking a bunch of questions and I don't even know what I'm supposed to be denying. So, spill it.”
After Ashley's unnecessarily dramatic entrance, the wash trash explanation seemed almost too boring for Austin to describe. He was sure that Ash would just bring up the refrigerator again and that she would have gone to all the stealth effort without a good reason. She hadn't been very impressed when he mentioned it the other night. “Jynx thinks those cops are here for her saucer.”
Ashley took a moment to absorb the information. Her jaw still slackened, waiting for the news, she just let her head hang limp and shook it slowly. “You dug another fridge out of the wash and now the government is already after it?”
Jynx nodded solemnly.
“It's not a fridge,” Austin said.
“Regardless, I sincerely doubt that the government mobilizes the men in black for any sort of kitchen appliance.” Still wearing her hot pink hood with her sunglasses on, she leaned forward and patted Jynx's hand. “Honey, you are acting paranoid, and you are going to start freaking people out.”
* * *
“The switches on the dashboard are worth more than my fuckin’ car, bro.” Terrence puffed the joint again and passed it to Earl. “I’m telling you, it’s a fuckin’ custom Shelby.”
“Listen, nobody rips the fuckin’ cobras off a Shelby GT though, okay?” Earl took a puff and preened the ashes on the edge of the curb. “Like, that’s a fucking expensive car, okay? And she just puts a cross on the grill? They sell that cheap ass shit at the parts stores, alright?”
Terrence shook his head. “It’s gotta be a hundred bands easy, bro.”
“Alright? And she makes coffee, ya know? She’s not going to be rolling around in a car that costs as much as a house, okay?”
“I’m in the wrong business,” Hitch said, looking moderately relieved since the boys returned.
“Seriously, right?” Earl took another puff and passed the joint to Hitch. “Like, if we had tits, we might be rolling around in something better than Teaspoon’s fuckin’ Kia all the time.”
The dishwasher appeared in the doorway looking exhausted. He sat on the back step beside Hitch.
“¿Todo bien, Octavio?” Hitch asked, taking another puff. “¿Ya terminastes los platos?”
“Si.” The dishwasher sighed and laid his head on Hitch’s shoulder. “Tengo que trapear.”
“Bueno,” Hitch nodded, exhaling a fragrant cloud.
Octavio waved the smoke away from his face. “Ay. Que huele malo. ¿Porque fumas este mierde, Paco?” The whisp of a dishwasher buried his face in Hitch’s shoulder to escape the secondhand smoke.
Earl snickered and exchanged a glance with Terrence. “Paco?” he inquired.
“It’s short for Francisco,” Hitch answered.
“Bro, no wonder you go by Hitch.” Terrence laughed.
“Like, literally. How many names you got?”
Hitch shrugged.
“And like, we go to jail and now you got a boyfriend?”
“Easy, guys.” Hitch glanced down at the sleight Latino beside him. “It’s been a long couple of days, here. I’m just glad the kid made it through.”
“You get lonely, bro?” Terrence chuckled as he stood to walk back inside for his nug jar and papers.
“Yeah, like how was it? You sauté some Michelin shit, or what?”
Hitch shrugged. “Just a walk in the park.”
“Bro, I keep telling you, that’s the scene where Goose got killed.”
Hitch nodded and patted Octavio’s back to get him moving. “Andale, chaparro.”
“Ay.” The kid got up and dusted off his butt. “No me llamas esso, drogado.” He shuffled in the back door.
Terrence came out the back door with the nearly empty nug jar. “Who smoked all my fuckin’ weed?”
“Like I said, it’s been a long couple of days.”