Mr. Paulson, the auditor, and previously plausibly deniable sociopath sat mostly motionless in the backseat, repeatedly clicking a ballpoint pen in a particular pattern. One click. Pause. Two rapid clicks. Pause for three seconds. Three rapid clicks and slowly releasing his breath. He seemed to be practicing a meditation of some sort in the backseat.
Besides the clicking, the ride back to the Playa Seca Motor Inn was a quiet. Martinez drove, slowly accepting the inevitable dissolution of his Terrestrial Investigations assets, including his own condominium and quite probably bank account quickly thereafter. He eased the Tahoe into the Motor Inn parking lot, listening to the rear suspension squeak and wondering if he would need to account for the missing meteorite when the auditor finished his work. He considered calling Levy briefly but didn’t have the patience to listen to another rambling Adderall-fueled rant on robots and reptilians, especially not to give him the bad news about the artifact.
O’Connor rode with the window cracked slightly to enjoy the cool night air. He contemplated the dissolution of his career, his marriage and cruiser, which would undoubtedly be skeletonized for scrap shortly. He regretted not picking up his own case of beer while the convenience store was still open. Pulling into the lot, he noticed the pool lights were accidentally left on. He thought he might take a quick dip before bed. He would probably not be sleeping.
One click. Pause. Two rapid clicks. Pause for three seconds. Three rapid clicks and slowly releasing his breath. When they arrived at the Motor Inn Mr. Paulson remained there, sitting in the back seat even after Martinez and O’Connor stepped out and stretched.
Martinez wasn’t eager to find out what was on the auditor’s mind, but the absence of the uncomfortable chuckle had both he and the sergeant slightly unnerved. The gleeful Vulcan nerve pinch on the mechanic made Paulson seem just a little more insidious, especially given his secrecy. Going catatonic in the backseat might be as good as it would get. He could get violent.
O’Connor shrugged at the chief and glanced down at his attire. “I think I might get a few laps in as long as we still have the pool.” The sergeant unclipped his gun belt and handed it to the chief. He pulled his badge from the hem of his board shorts, glanced at it briefly, and gave it to the chief. He kicked his flip flops off, yanked the faded pastel polo shirt over his head, and tossed it over the top of the Tahoe where Paulson remained seated, rhythmically clicking that ballpoint pen. One click. Pause.
Martinez considered O’Connor’s gun belt and badge for just a few moments before he nodded his understanding.
Two rapid clicks. Pause for three seconds.
O’Connor nodded back. “You, uh, wanna get breakfast in the morning?” he said, stepping lightly as he crossed the parking lot barefoot.
Three rapid clicks and slowly releasing his breath.
Martinez sighed. “O’Connor…” he showed his sergeant the belt and the badge. “...These are yours. You don’t have to turn them in.”
“Eric,” he said. “Just Eric.” He swung open the rusty iron pool gate. “Hey, Chief!” Eric called. “Can I get a ride to Los Angeles tomorrow? I gotta go see about a girl.”
“O’Connor!”
“Eric!” He called back and leaped backward into the pool with an unreasonably loud splash for such a late hour.
At the sound of the splash, the night manager woke from a dream, saw the pool lights rippling through his dusty Venetian blinds, and contented himself with shutting the lights off to let the swimmer know that the pool was closed. Likewise, Paulson seemed to wake from his dream long enough to cease the pen clicking and dislodge himself from the back seat. He regarded Martinez with a blank stare and gazed down at the gun belt contemplatively. “He’s lying,” the auditor said, shaking his head slowly. He slid the pen into his shirt pocket. Without another word, he turned and walked up the stairs to the room.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Whether it was a stack of stolen exhaust systems or Vickers’ flying saucer, Martinez was confident that it wasn’t sitting on the lot anywhere. One didn’t have to be a super cop to see that those kids were guilty as hell of something, but the Lidar images had shown an object about as big as a car. They poked all over that lot for nearly half an hour, and although they looked at everything that was exactly the size of a car, none of them resembled the missing artifact. A few moments later the auditor emerged from the room with his Styrofoam package under his arm. Still carrying his briefcase, he regarded the recently resigned sergeant swimming laps with a bemused and distant smirk.
The chief affectionately, but cautiously patted the auditor’s shoulder. “Let’s all take a break, get some rest, give it some time.” He wished he had peeked inside the box when he had had the chance. “We’re all still on the case, right? There’s still plenty of time to figure this thing out.” He gestured towards their room, waving the sergeant’s Desert Eagle and official credentials.
Undeterred by the loss of the pool lights, “Eric” did a backward somersault in the shallow end, thrashing his legs in the air as he did so, and taking the chief’s bluster to the bottom with him.
“We can debrief in the morning,” the chief said, trying to salvage some professionalism.
Mr. Paulson frowned. “I might take a short walk,” he said as if it were perfectly natural for one to take their Styrofoam cooler for a walk at nearly four in the morning.
“Suit yourself,” the chief said, drifting off towards the room alone.
Worried that Mr. Paulson might still have something to prove, and return to the tow lot, Martinez fumbled in his pockets watching Paulson’s reflection in the window. The auditor consulted his watch and started strolling due South, away from the tow lot. With his briefcase in hand and the Styrofoam box under his arm, he might be on his way to catch a commuter train somewhere.
One could only hope.
*
How long “Eric” floated in the water, he didn’t know. He knit his fingers behind his head and let the rest of his body go limp, drifting around the dark, quiet pool in the earliest hours of the desert morning. The moonless sky was star-bright, vast, and limitless as if every star were aware of him. He felt perfectly buoyant, and he rose and fell with each breath, lost in the delicate lacework of the Milky Way, stretching so gloriously across the mystery that lay beyond. It was the forever and ever that he and Mary had talked about when they were still in high school, laying on beach towels under the bluffs, letting the Malibu breezes dry their skin after skinny dipping. To the stars and back was an easy trip when they were young. Relieved of duty, he would get her back. They didn’t need the money. They didn’t need a succulent garden; they just needed each other. She would see.
Settling into what would inevitably become yet another hangover, “Eric” found a happy place drifting listlessly towards enlightenment or an accidental drowning. “Death by misadventure,” he mumbled to himself, blowing a few overly chlorinated bubbles with it. He was momentarily entertained by the idea of the chief and Mr. Paulson finding his corpse floating face down in the pool like a prized goldfish the next morning. He thought he heard music for a few seconds but initially dismissed it. Although the pool was perfectly still, he doubted that anyone nearby was even awake to have a radio on. A moment later he recognized the song and began singing along to the opening strains of Starship. “We built this city…” he burbled under his breath, “We built this city on rock and roll.” he blubbered bubbles and lifted his head out of the water just far enough to check which direction the music was coming from. Somebody to the south had apparently decided to blast the superhits of the early eighties at full volume, at four o’clock in the morning.
“Eric” shrugged to himself. “Fucking tweakers,” he muttered, and was just about to sink again when he noticed the figure skulking up around the backside of the Playa Seca Motor Inn, briefcase in hand. Remaining motionless, “Eric” watched the auditor slink around the stairwell to his room. He glanced over his shoulder to see no one was watching and quietly shut the door behind him.
“You know how to tell when somebody’s doing something illegal, Eric?”
“Gee, Sergeant O’Connor, how do you tell?”
“Well, Eric, they’ll be super fucking suspicious for some reason.”
“Gee, Sergeant O’Connor, you sure are a smart one!”
The music continued for another fifteen minutes, or so. “Eric” couldn’t imagine what sort of sound system that guy must have to be blasting music that loud, but he had great taste in terrible hair bands. Halfway through Twisted Sister singing “I wanna rock” there was shouting, and some loud hammering noises, followed by some squawking attempt at squelching the sound system. Exactly two shots were fired in rapid succession, from what sounded like a large caliber pistol. Someone whooped loudly once, and just afterward, peace was restored to Arroyo Grande with only a slight lingering ringing of the ears.
“Back on the clock,” Sergeant O’Connor burbled into his dark pool.