Jeremiah came out of the trailer staggering. He kicked open the screen door with a Louisville slugger in his right hand, holding his pants up with his left. “What the fuck is going on out here!?” he raged, only to find the sheriff with the three guys from Phoenix, Austin and Jynx cornered and backing towards the trailer, trapped between the lawmen and the drunk guy with the bat. Surveying the scene, Jeremiah unwound visibly, hanging limp like his strings had dropped. He rubbed his face, nearly losing his jeans in the process. “Hey Squeezy? Better put something on. We’ve got company.” He rested the bat against the side of the trailer and finished buttoning his fly. “Evening, Sheriff.”
Etherton nodded a curt salutation. Clearly, he wasn’t thrilled about the situation, either. “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Jiménez, but these gentlemen here seem to think that you have something they are looking for.”
Jeremiah couldn’t remember the last time he’d been addressed by his last name, outside of a courtroom setting. Still slightly whiskey-drunk, his head jerked. “The fuck?” he said. He leaned back into the dim yellow glow of the trailer. “Hey, squeezy? Toss me my shirt.”
The three guys from Phoenix shifted nervously on their feet. O'Connor's Crown Vic was still parked in the lot, awaiting a new radiator hose and Martinez eyed the meteorite on a pallet beside the welding bench. Mr. Paulson chuckled softly as he watched Megan’s pale form in the trailer window as she awkwardly attempted to dress. “Could you please have the woman come out here as well,” Mr. Paulson said. While it might have been a legitimate sounding law enforcement request to have everyone in plain sight, the rest of the officers turned a curious gaze on the man who generally remained fairly silent.
Jeremiah wasn’t impressed. “She’s dressing,” he growled and leaned back into the trailer, “Squeezy?” only to be hit in the face by his shirt. “Thank you.” As he pulled it on and snapped a few of the buttons, he pulled a cigarette from his pocket and placed it to his lips, shooting a bleary sideways glance at Austin. Both Austin and Jynx looked petrified. They were entirely out of their element now, and Jeremiah was sure that he already regretted loaning them the flatbed.
Megan stepped down and hid behind him, despite being mostly dressed. She’d made it into her jeans, but she wore his motorcycle jacket over a bra. Mr. Paulson chuckled. Jeremiah regarded the courtyard, swaying slightly. He gently patted her thigh as he reached back, grabbed the handle of the baseball bat, and placed it in her hand. Turning slightly, he kissed her forehead. “Gimme a minute babe.” He bent down, reached into the minifridge, and pulled two beers, popping the caps and passing one back to Megan. He took a long pull and regarded his audience coolly. Strolling past Austin, he pulled his pack from his pocket and offered the kid a smoke. Austin’s hands shook as he withdrew the cigarette from the pack. The kid looked like he was about to have an aneurysm. Jeremiah flicked his zippo, offering him a light. Austin puffed awkwardly. Jeremiah patted his shoulder, pushing him back towards the trailer. Austin nodded and backed away from the handful of lawmen, nudging Jynx towards Megan.
“I’m not even going to bother to ask if you’ve got a warrant.” Just the fact that the sheriff was with them meant that they really didn’t need one. “I don’t know or care what you’re looking for.”
“Jeremiah—” the sheriff started, but Jeremiah held up a finger to stop him. Even if he did have the right to search the property whenever he chose, dragging a few officers by for a midnight search and seizure seemed patently rude. The kid was clearly a little drunk, obviously angry, and judging by the swelling that slowly subsided in the fly of his jeans, he had every right to be.
“Why in the hell are you guys wandering around my lot at three in the fucking morning?”
Sheriff Etherton glanced over at the three agents from Phoenix who had suddenly grown silent now that they had barged through the front door bragging about probable cause. The Sheriff strolled towards the Costco tent. “Sorry, Jeremiah.” He leaned back against the tent pole as casually as he could. “These gentlemen seem to think that you might have something to do with the recent catalytic converter thefts.”
Jeremiah’s head jerked. “What?” At first, offended that the sheriff had led them there, the sheriff had the deadpan gaze of a gambler bluffing a low hand to raise the stakes.
The sheriff shrugged. “Beats me,” he said.
Officer Moondoggie affected his instinctual cop stance. “Look, Jack, we know you're a good guy and all, but we have reason to suspect that your friends here might have gotten themselves in a little too deep with the drugs. They might be fencing stolen parts.” He hitched his thumbs in his gun belt, inadvertently sliding his board shorts down a few inches so he had to adjust.
Jeremiah glanced back at Jynx and Austin, huddled up against the trailer with Megan. He grinned nonchalantly at the trio. “What,” he said, glancing over at the sheriff, “the actual fuck, Sheriff?”
“Let's cut the shit,” Mr. Paulson interjected. Surprised by his sudden involvement, both the sergeant and the chief made space for the cheap suit. “We all know why we're really here.” Mr. Paulson smiled conspiratorially and took a few steps toward Jeremiah, becoming eerily amicable as he did. “I know you didn't steal the catalytic converters. Frankly, I can imagine that accusation might be a little insulting to you.” He put his hand on Jeremiah's shoulder in an overt show of camaraderie that fell entirely flat. “No,” he continued. “You kids pulled something out of the hills that doesn't belong to you, and we're here to collect it.”
Stripped of all pretenses, the collection of individuals on the back lot of the desert sands towing and automotive took the opportunity to collectively stop breathing momentarily as they waited for either man to draw and shoot, so to speak.
Jeremiah tilted his head just slightly, letting slip a lazy hangdog smile that only the sheriff recognized. He was an honest ex-con; he just wasn't as honest as he could be.
“Seems to me, there are salvage laws in this state.” Jeremiah stubbornly folded his long arms across his chest, smirking. “Finders keepers, losers weepers.” He shrugged apologetically.
Mr. Paulson continued to smile, but clenched Jeremiah's shoulder, squeezing with an uncanny strength while pressing his thumb into Jeremiah's clavicle. The cocky grease monkey's knees buckled beneath him, in an excruciating amount of pain. Mr. Paulson bent slightly at the waist to speak. “You did not find what you think you found because what you think you found does not exist. Therefore, if you think you found it, you should not exist either.”
While both Martinez and O'Connor were familiar with the use of pressure points as a method of persuasion, neither had imagined the awkward, quiet clerk capable of such a sinister display. It had been, they tacitly agreed, a bad idea to follow the kids after all. The sheriff thought to intercede, but he was sure that whoever this guy was, he definitely had jurisdiction wherever the hell he wanted. Jynx and Austin just looked on, horrified that they were hurting Jeremiah.
Hissing through clenched teeth, Jeremiah's grimace twisted into a grotesque grin. “You want it? Fine, it’s yours, so long as you get the fucking thing off my lot.”
Jynx lurched forward, “Jeremiah, no!” but Austin held her back.
Jeremiah held them both back with a raised hand.
Mr. Paulson released his shoulder and patted it jovially, allowing Jeremiah a moment to breathe. “Now, see? I knew we could come to an understanding.”
Jeremiah rose slowly, lifted by those invisible puppet strings. He shook out his arm and cracked his neck without even a glance towards Jynx and Austin; too ashamed to look in their direction. “Kids pull some shit scrap out of the wash to make a few bucks, fucking pigs come around my lot at three in the fucking morning.” He muttered, his anger seeming to swell as he stomped back to the trailer and slid his bare feet into his boots. He grabbed a set of work gloves off the bench. “How many times have you guys been by this week? Can’t just fucking ask me in the afternoon?” He chugged his beer and hucked it off into the rusted husks of wrecks in the yard. The crashing sound was muffled by the early morning wind. O'Connor unconsciously rested the palm of his hand on his pistol, but the three men from Phoenix all shifted nervously and leaned back. “But you want it, it’s yours.”
“Jeremiah!” Jynx protested, weakly.
He pointed at her, glaring a righteous anger. “I told you that if you left it on my lot for more than a week, it was mine. Now you have brought fucking Feds to my home, Jynx. In the middle of the fucking night, no less. Decidedly uncool.” As Jynx shrunk back from his rage, she saw, even briefly, the germ’s mischievous smirk. He strode across the lot, towards the old shed and the collection of used oil barrels on the other side, pulling on his gloves and still muttering. As he approached the domed, amorphous tarp-covered shape, a motion sensor tripped, bathing the side lot of dumpsters and discarded parts in a halogen glare. “Y’all should be givin’ ‘em some sort of award for roadside maintenance, but instead y’all show up to cockblock the fucking tow truck driver?”
At the mention, Megan blushed slightly, pulling the front of her jacket closed and the handful at the front of the trailer started toeing at pebbles and staring intently at the Astroturf carpet. “So yeah, you can fucking have it.” Jeremiah reached for a tarp and jerked it away to reveal a pile of dusty, oxidized scrap metal, stacked atop the dented stainless-steel refrigerator they’d pulled out of the wash six months earlier. Despite the flourish of the reveal, nobody was terribly impressed with the result. Their saucer was nothing more than a collection of garbage that the kids had hauled in like pop cans for a deposit. Somehow, the weather balloon story wasn’t quite as suspicious in real-time.
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O’Connor hitched his gun belt up his hip, fortifying his guts against the raw shame of the entire situation. He was supposed to be in LA with his own wife, potentially getting laid, and instead, he was about to arrest a couple of Cub Scouts for their merit badge attempt. He couldn’t blame the guy for being angry. O’Connor was just glad the guy wasn’t armed. He strolled over to the pile of metal, chiseling some caked-on alkaline mud from the bottom corner. It wasn't exactly the right shape, but it was definitely pulled out of those hills. It wasn't a stack of mufflers, but it was a weather balloon-worthy explanation for the Lidar image. The sergeant was the first to speak, rallying his best cop voice and hitching his thumbs in his old police-issued gun belt. “So, uh, you mind if we have a look around? Just to be thorough.” He knew that there was nothing to find, but he wasn’t about to end it with a pile of trash.
“Have at it, man. You don’t mind if I don’t put the fucking kettle on.” Jeremiah pulled his gloves off and tossed them back on the workbench. Pushing through the kids he reached into the trailer door and slapped at the wall until he found the garage remotes. He palmed angrily at the buttons, slamming them, starting the big rolling repair bay doors to raise slowly. Inside the shop, the dim glow of the garage door bulbs left most of the shop in shadows but revealed three bays: the dented Honda, which still needed that oil change, O’Connor’s Crown Vic waiting for a water pump, fan, and radiator, and a car on the third lift, draped in a tarp and lifted to the rafters. As he leaned back, too close to Jynx, their cheeks brushed. “Be cool,” Jeremiah whispered.
Martinez was entirely stunned. Vickers had seemed so confident. Blurry Nikon snapshots and all, he had nearly convinced the chief that this, finally, was the real deal. Martinez crossed the lot slowly, willing the pile of garbage to become an actual alien artifact. Beyond the colossal waste of time and money, Mr. Paulson’s presence in the debacle certainly wouldn’t help his budget audit case with the commissioner. He wanted this. He needed this to get his funding back. He stood before the pile of scrap metal, slowly shaking his head.
Mr. Paulson chuckled softly to himself in his usual unnerving manner. Glancing around the lot at the handful of suspects he was intrigued by the little girl’s protests. Widening his gaze to incorporate the entire lot of abandoned vehicles, haphazard storage sheds, and various dust-covered work benches, one thing stood out to him as particularly suspect. Standing in the back corner of the open lot, as pretty as if it had just come from the store, sat a gleaming white pop-up garage of the sort just large enough to house something interesting. He chuckled again. “What’s that?” He pointed at the Costco tent behind the Sheriff. For just a brief moment, the only sound on the lot was the morning wind howling through the wrecks and the tarps flapping gently. Austin and Jynx held their breath. The sheriff, unsure whether to lie and say he checked it, risking a possible federal obstruction charge, or to stand out of the way, didn’t have to make that choice. Mr. Paulson strode across the lot, still carrying his briefcase, and charged into the tent. Jynx and Austin glanced at each other, eyes wide, but when they looked down at Jeremiah, he sat serenely contemplating the ashes at the end of his Camel wide. “Megan, Baby, would you grab the whiskey for me, and maybe a few shot glasses? I have a funny feeling we’ll be here for a while.” Megan, entirely confused as to what was going on and why the feds were searching the junkyard, nodded blankly, stepping back into the trailer for a moment.
“Jeremiah,” Jynx hissed.
“Cheese it, kid. Just be cool.”
He pulled a couple of beers from the fridge and offered one to Austin. Austin eyed the sheriff. “Relax, Austin. Sit down. You look nervous.” Austin took the beer and did as he was told, plopping down onto his normal stool. Jynx squatted down to rest her butt on a cinder block, still looking like she was coiled to spring and run if necessary. She wrapped her skinny arms around her skinny legs, watching the Feds intently as they filed into the tent.
Mr. Paulson stood just inside the tent, mildly disappointed. The tent was nearly empty. An air compressor with an attached painting rig sat in the corner beside a makeshift workbench. A few cans of automotive paint, and a few cans of spray paint lined up against the tarped wall. A wad of plastic painting tarp and blue masking tape lay bunched up in the far corner, smudged flat black and used. “Great detective work,” O’Connor patted Mr. Paulson’s shoulder condescendingly.
O’Connor, Martinez, and Mr. Paulson stood near the front of the Costco tent, discussing their options. While the witness testimony seemed credible, and they all agreed that the kids and the mechanic smelled guilty as hell, there was nothing there after all. Short of bringing in a forensics team to look for any evidence that it had ever been there, the entire search was bordering on a solid court case for a fourth amendment violation.
The sheriff, still confused that the thing that was in the tent a few days earlier had somehow vanished, watched them, nearly as eager to find it now as they were. He glanced furtively over at Jeremiah, who sat in his Lazy Boy with a stupid grin on his face, entirely amused; the three agents, standing in the third bay, quietly arguing about their next course of action. The morning breeze caught the tarp that covered the car on the lift, revealing the smooth concave flat black underbelly of that thing from the tent, hovering two feet above the raised lift. Jeremiah had somehow risen the damn thing into the rafters and the Feds were standing directly beneath it, arguing about the veracity of Dr. Vickers’s account.
“You and you.” Jeremiah pointed at O’Connor and Martinez as he strode across the lot. “You damn well come back bearing armloads of beer if either of you want your shit back before September.” He hooked a thumb towards the garage, the black Crown Vic with its hood propped slightly open, and the shiny ball of extraterrestrial slag with the teeth in it. “Now get the fuck off my lawn.”
O'Connor was indignant, but Jeremiah could easily screw them both over solidly for less than a year in the county jail. Martinez nodded curtly by way of apology. Paulson just glared. Jeremiah followed them as far as the front door and slammed it behind them. Boots still half unlaced, he tromped back across the lot, stabbing his cigarette out on one of the work benches. “What the fuck was that all about, Greg?” Jeremiah nearly spat the sheriff’s name out.
Etherton leaned back. “Now hold on, there, kid. I only pulled in when I saw these two cornered.”
“And what the fuck are you doing pulling into my lot?” he asked the kids.
“We were being followed,” Jynx said. “We didn’t know where else to go.”
“No shit you were being followed, by fucking Feds.” Jeremiah pulled another cigarette from his pocket. “So, you lead them right to it?”
“They followed us from Sancho’s,” Austin pleaded.
“Well, no shit, Austin. Jynx has been telling you that they were looking for it the whole damn time. I figured you might listen to her, at least.” Jeremiah took a seat and wiped his face, looking just slightly unstrung. Even Jynx could see that Jeremiah had been a little rattled by the appearance of the feds, even the three least competent possible lawmen, arriving on his impound lot in the middle of the night. “How did you know what they were here for?” she asked, still impressed with his clever substitution.
“That dipshit sergeant Moondoggie left his case file in the passenger seat when he left me with his car.” He tossed his shot back and reclined in the Lazy Boy. “There was no way I was going to miss reading a file marked ‘top secret’.” He offered his shot glass up to Megan. She glanced down at the bottle in her hand and the shot glass in his, contemplating them both like abstract unrelated objects, as she was still reeling from the recent attempted raid. Abruptly remembering that she was a bartender, she poured the shot like an automaton.
Jeremiah downed his shot, and feeling his comfortable buzz returning, reached out and ran his hand along Megan’s thigh, startling her out of autopilot. She tousled his hair and smiled down at him, but still looked stunned.
“Well, Jynx,” he chuckled, “I think it is safe to say that this time it is not a fridge, and it is in fact very valuable.”
Jynx smiled and nodded. She punched Austin in the shoulder. “I told you it was something.”
Megan took the cigarette from Jeremiah and continued smoking it for him. “Did you tow their car or something? she asked, still stunned to see Mr. Mai Tai relatively sober and attempting professionalism.
Jeremiah chuckled. She didn't really need to know any details, so there wasn't much point in explaining it to her. “Something like that.”
Sheriff Etherton affected his most authoritarian tone. “Those three might have walked away empty-handed for now, but that guy in the suit didn't give up easy, and I'm sure it's only a matter of time before they're back.”
Megan, realizing that she was still smoking Jeremiah's cigarette, handed him back the last drag so that he could stab it out in the ashtray. “What's so important about the stupid car? Just give it back.”
Reduced to a clandestine code, the Tough Guy Club's childish defense seemed petty. If it really were just a vehicle, it wouldn't be worth a dislocated shoulder and potential jail time. Everybody seemed to have forgotten that it was a fucking flying saucer and that he had fixed it, and now the damn thing was hovering in a repair bay, primed to get them all nonexisted by some psycho with seriously bad breath.
“Look, Greg,” he looked ready to unleash a tirade but thought better of it, “Sheriff,” he adjusted. “With all due respect, sir, the salvage law is on our side on this one. The kids claimed it fair and square. If those guys want it, they can damn well pay us for it.”
“It's not for sale!” Jynx blurted, only to realize that she was yelling at a police officer. She stepped back against Austin.
The sheriff raised his hands for quiet. “Be that as it may, Jeremiah, you're not talking about a hunk of scrap; whatever that thing is, some very big people apparently want it.” The surfer boy and his strange retinue were the least of their problems. Seeing the saucer silently hover up near the ceiling served to explain the sudden arrival of the Smith and Johnson family reunion. They wouldn't be pretending to be tourists for too much longer, and they wouldn't be politely knocking before a proper search. “This isn't about whether or not it's fair; it's about the actual men in black who want their toy back. The law isn't going to be so cut and dried on a matter like this.”
Jeremiah looked tired. Whether for the money, or for the principle, he didn't want to let the saucer go, and one glance at Jynx visibly steeled his stubbornness. They just stared at each other for a moment. She pleaded with her eyes and thought she recognized a soft, resigned smile as he made up his mind. “It's your saucer, shorty. What do you say?”
“Jeremiah, —” the sheriff started, but Jeremiah held up a finger, waiting for her answer.
He knew exactly what she would say, but he asked her anyway. “Finders keepers,” she repeated quietly. As childish as it might sound, it sounded right to Jeremiah. He nodded. “Just give us a day, Greg. Please?” He stabbed his cigarette out, leaning forward like he might take a knee and beg. “We just found the key.”
Torn between his chummy friendship with the kid, a scrap of metal that knew a stupid pet trick, and a whole lot of paramilitary Jon Does pretending to be tourists, the sheriff knew there was no right choice. Jeremiah wasn't exactly the sort of guy to stand on principle, so this thing must be personal. Interrupted from their battle of wills, Jynx spoke. “The key?” she asked, quietly.
Jeremiah smiled and nodded.