Knowing (28 page)

“These are tough times for many of us in Colorado and around the country,” Crandall continued. “It’s vital that we attract established companies and promote our state as one that is forward thinking. With that said, I’m here today standing in front of rich grassland that is currently not be used to its full potential. I’m aware that the approximately one thousand acres seen behind me has been hotly debated in the news and is a point of contention with many environmentalists as to how this ranch land might be utilized. I realize that Congresswoman Weller dealt with a lot of these issues already and made the decision to let the land stay as it is, preferring to opt for an open space agreement. However, after an extensive overview, that agreement was found to have various loopholes attached to it that could complicate the fair use of this acreage in the future. Obviously, we do not want to embark on any agreement that could potentially excise this valuable area from future use.

“Now, I’m fully aware of the environmental concerns many of you have regarding oil and gas and fracking. And let me be clear that this is
not
what is being considered for this acreage. We think we’ve created a sustainable solution that will put this land to good use and not create any damage. In fact, our plan will actually improve the integrity of this area and be quite sustainable.”

Sustainable
. He said it twice, two sentences in a row. Jane knew it was a loaded word and that whatever followed, usually carried a caveat. “Sustainable” could mean anything—from actually improving and maintaining the land while protecting it from misuse, thereby “sustaining” its integrity, to turning the land into a zone where no human are allowed.

“I want to introduce to you Mr. Andrea Bourgain. He is the CEO of The Wöden Group. He’s flown all the way to the United States from his home in Belgium. Please welcome him!”

Crandall turned the microphone over to a handsome, gray-haired man in his late sixties. Bourgain spoke with a peculiar accent that blended French and German intonations. Jane quickly brought out her computer and did a search on Wöden. But the first few links that popped up had nothing to do with the Belgium company. Jane clicked on one link and read the first sentence:

“Together with his Norse counterpart, Odin, Wöden is a major deity of Germanic paganism.” Jane stared at the word, “Odin.” It was a little too coincidental that it happened to be the same name of the corporation that was attached to a fleet of automobiles, one of which just happened to be driven by Rudy and parked near the
Anubus
crash. While Bourgain prattled on about how wonderful it was to be “in your beautiful state,” Jane did a further search on Wöden. “For the Anglo-Saxons,” the story acknowledged, “Wöden was the
psychopomp
or carrier-off of the dead.” Jane shook her head. Of all the names a company can come up with, why in the hell would they choose a name that historically was connected to a pagan god known for carrying off the dead?

Jane called Harlan to check on him. “You okay in there?”

“Yeah…” he replied with little enthusiasm. “I guess so.”

She focused back on Bourgain and his comments.

“We at The Wöden Group are very excited to have this opportunity for expansion into the United States. Thanks to the influential, forward thinking minds who helped make this happen.” While it was subtle, Bourgain turned his body slightly toward Rudy, who was still standing behind the podium.

Jane immediately did a comprehensive search for “The Wöden Group, Belgium” and found their company’s website. After scanning page after page, she still couldn’t figure out what they did, except that their motto was, “The forefront of innovative science begins here.” Buried deeply at the bottom of one page was a single link titled, “Vaccine research.” She clicked the link and found a page that had fewer than two paragraphs. It stated that The Wöden Group “was focused on pioneering research into cutting edge vaccine technology.” But aside from a few fluffy statements that followed, it appeared that Wöden’s interest in vaccines was either still in development or not their main objective. So why in the hell did the CEO fly over from Belgium to stand in front of a desolate swath of grassland in northeastern Colorado and wax poetically about the “natural beauty” of this area?

Then a light went on in Jane’s head. The only controversy Dora Weller ever dealt with was her denial of a Biotech firm’s desire to buy up grassland. She sided with the eco-crowd’s demands to keep the land away from “those damn capitalists.” While Jane was a proud capitalist and avoided being in the same breathing space as the eco-Nazis she loathed, there was something about the smoothness of Bourgain’s statements that concerned her. It didn’t take her long to uncover an article that mentioned Dora Weller and Wöden in the same paragraph. Two years prior, Weller had rejected the final plan from The Wöden Group to purchase one thousand acres in northwestern Colorado for “research purposes.”

Jane searched valiantly and found nothing that explained what kind of research was planned. Nothing on Wöden’s site was explanatory. In fact, there were links on their site that had more photos than text. It almost felt to Jane as if the website was there because the company felt they had to have a presence on the Internet but they weren’t about to divulge much more than pabulum. While Bourgain continued to take questions from reporters and answer them with well-crafted but benign responses, Jane clicked on all the links again on Wöden’s site and only looked at the photos.

Most of them looked like stock shots, including images of beakers in a laboratory, flowers in a meadow and a sun rising in the distance across a field. She clicked again on the vaccine link and focused on the three photos that were there. One was a syringe filled with a yellow liquid. “Jesus,” Jane said out loud. She flashed on the discordant hallucination she had after being knocked out by S.B. She could still see it clearly as if the scene were presented in front of her. How strange, Jane mused. When she’d blacked out in the past due to too much booze, her hallucinations never gelled long enough for her to have a cogent memory when she awakened, let alone have a crystal clear recall of the event hours later. But sitting on the bed in that motel room, Jane could easily close her eyes and generate the scene as it unfolded. The floor was littered with hundreds of plastic syringes, all filled with a golden serum. And there was the old man standing at his desk, looking at Jane and holding the white binder with
IEB
written on the cover.

Jane continued to click on every link on Wöden’s website and she was about to give up when she spotted an innocuous image that made no sense. It didn’t fit. But there it was. It was a photo of a goat in a grassy field, staring up at the camera. There were no other animals featured on the entire site. She reread the company’s motto: “The forefront of innovative science begins here.” But there was absolutely nothing that linked what those innovations were and why they included a single photo of a goat in a field of grass. The news conference ended and Jane stared at the walls. She cautioned herself to not read too much into all these strange syncs. But ignoring a sync or odd coincidence was also not something she favored. She’d learned the hard way that sometimes the truth is standing right there in front of you, but you can’t see it because you either don’t believe that truth can be that obvious or you choose not to see it. But either way, it never stops the truth from operating and continuing to its logical conclusion. It was like a morbidly obese woman looking at her body in the mirror and seeing a healthy person staring back. She could deny she was dangerously fat all day long but when her heart gave out after the third rack of pork ribs and she was gasping for her last breath, the only thing standing between her and the afterlife was the truth.

Turning back to the TV, the scene cut back to the newsroom and the anchor desk.

“Officials tell us that they still believe escaped fugitive Harlan Kipple was involved in some manner with the Weller shooting,” the anchor reported as the same shot of Harlan in the crowd was shown again. “However, sources close to the investigation are telling us they are not ruling out the possibility of an accomplice.”

Jane’s jaw dropped.

“Police are asking anyone who was at the scene and who was taking cell phone video to please contact them with any footage of the event.”

For a dead woman, she was suddenly becoming a potentially lively suspect.

How in the hell was this possible? Jane turned off the television and sat with her racing thoughts. She was witnessing chaos unfold and seeing firsthand the manipulation of lies and half-truths in order to condemn an innocent man. And now they were seeking an accomplice of Harlan’s? What was going on here? Were they going to ID Jane or some other innocent soul? If it was Jane, how would they explain her “death” and now resurrection? The whole thing defied logic and yet there it was. The first article she found online that mentioned an accomplice was followed by over five hundred comments, all of them basing their opinions on false information. But that didn’t stop the armchair jockeys from firing off a damning missive from the comfort of their desktop computer. Reading through the top rated comments, it was clear to Jane that Harlan’s name was forever ruined. He’d been effectively turned into an evil scourge, with people fantasizing about “taking him out” and “doing the world a favor.” One man wrote with impeccable spelling and grammar, “If that peace of shite had himself an acomplis, than that pirson shuld dye 2.” Great, Jane thought. If she was discovered to be that “acomplis,” the idea of being taken out of this world by someone that stupid made her shudder.

It also made her angry and a boiling fury began to roll inside her. Except for a few conspiracy type websites she found, nobody was giving Harlan the benefit of the doubt. He’d already been tried, convicted and sentenced to death. Romulus looked to be pulling the strings on this fiasco, feeding false information to the media who seemed to have forgotten how to investigate a story. And there
was
a story here. But how would it get out to the public? If the mainstream media outlets had been methodically corrupted to this extent, what chance was there to push the truth forward?

Harlan emerged from the bathroom. Still just wearing the overalls and no shirt underneath and with a cleanly shaven head that sported four noticeable cuts from the razor, he looked like he should be sitting on a ramshackle porch down in the Bayou, shucking corn.

“Well? What’s the verdict on my new look?” he asked her.

She had no clue how to respond. “Let’s hope the flannel shirt dries soon and you can find the hat I bought you.” Checking the time, she let out a hard breath. Hank was probably heading out soon to purchase the cell phones and other items. It would take him about two and a half hours if he drove like a demon and three hours if he kept the rental van under eighty miles an hour. Knowing Hank, he’d show up with the hood of that van hot as a pistol.

Finding one of the pine needle beers, she handed it to Harlan. “Here.”

“Kinda early in the day for that, don’t you think?”

“Thought it would relax you. And maybe I can get a contact high.”

“You tryin’ to get me drunk, Jane?”

“No.” She replaced the beer in the case, feeling stupid for offering it to him. She went over the plan again with Harlan, making sure he understood everything. “Don’t open this door for anyone unless you hear my name,” she counseled him in a grave tone.

“I won’t, Jane.”

The hours passed and Jane tried to rest but her mind wouldn’t stop chasing down options of how to extricate Harlan from this mess. Yet, every prospect she considered led to ten more complications.

“Know what I’m thinkin’?” Harlan said out of nowhere.

“What’s that?”

“After you see Hank, we oughta just take off and head to New Mexico.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “And do what?”

“You
know
what, Jane.”

“It’s not happening, Harlan. I’m not seeing her. She’s probably not even at the halfway house anymore,” she added, knowing full well Wanda was scheduled to be there through the week.

“You gotta see her, Jane! She’s family.”

“She’s not family. The only family I have is a younger brother. And he’s sitting in the Amazon jungle right now with his new wife enjoying a shamanic cleansing celebration.” As crazy as that sounded, Jane figured Mike’s plans for his day were infinitely more satisfying than her intended strategy.

Half an hour later, her cell phone rang. “Hey, there,” she answered.

“I’m sitting here in the parking lot. Where are you?” Hank stated.

“Go to the front office and check into room number fifty-one.”

“Where are you?”

“I can’t check into the room. Remember? I’m the one with no cash? Room fifty-one. I’ve already scoped it out. It’s private. Call me when you get there.” She hung up before he could respond.

Harlan stared at her silently.

“What?” she asked him, irritated.

“How come you can’t be honest with him?”

“Oh, Jesus, Harlan. I’m not even going to answer that question.”

“Maybe if you told him the truth, he could—”

“What? That I’m harboring a fugitive? But don’t worry, because he didn’t do all the shit they’re saying he did. Really, Harlan?
Really
?”

He studied the carpet silently. “How do you play someone you love?”

“I’m not playing him,” Jane stated, nervously getting up and discreetly checking out the window.

“Yeah. You are. It’s not right.”

She let out a derisive snort. “I’m doing this for you, Harlan. It was time to do something desperate. We were sitting ducks in that car. And no money? What am I supposed to do, huh?”

He considered it for a few seconds. “You don’t set up the people you love, Jane.”

She nodded. “Okay.” She checked out the window again. “So, maybe I don’t love him?”

He eyed her like a hawk before walking over to the window. “Don’t do it, Jane.
Please
don’t.”

“Don’t do what?” she asked with a flinty edge.

His eyes filled with tears. “Don’t turn into one of them. You got a good heart.”

She smiled in a dismissive manner. “What’s that gotten me, huh?” She turned back to the window. “You do what you have to do in this world, Harlan.” Anger rose in her throat. “I’m trying to fucking save your life! Does that count for anything?!” She moved back into the room. “Stay away from the window!” she ordered him.

Harlan sauntered back to the bed and sat down. He stared at her as she avoided his eyes. After several tense minutes, her cell phone rang.

“Yeah?” she answered with a quick clip.

“Okay. I’m in room fifty-one. Where are you?”

“Be right there.” She hung up and scanned the room for her leather satchel. Finding it, she stopped, took a breath and gathered her racing thoughts. “Don’t use the phone or leave this room,” she quietly offered, without looking at Harlan. Collecting her overnight bag, she took another necessary breath to calm her mind and walked out the door.

She was careful not to make a lot of noise as she walked the thirty-foot distance to room fifty-one. Jane was shaking as she rapped on the door. Hank swung the door open and paused for a moment. She wasn’t sure what to make of it so she waited, staring at him with lying eyes.

“Jesus, Jane,” he reached out and grabbed her, pulling her into his room. He drew her toward him and passionately kissed her. Coming up for air, he glanced at her up and down. “You look like hell, Chopper,” he stated, using his pet name for her. “What happened to your lip?”

She weakened as she dove into his blue eyes. “Stop talking, would you?” Tossing her satchel and bag on the table and chairs by the window and drawing the front curtain, she tugged at his denim shirt and eagerly kissed him as if they’d been apart for decades. God, it was like coming home, enveloped in his arms and feeling secure for the first time since they parted.

His face colored with worry. “Please, Jane. Tell me what’s going on.”

She undid his belt and unbuttoned his jeans. “Not now. Please.”

Their clothes quickly littered the floor and they crawled under the covers. Like excited teenagers, they consumed each other, moving in perfect harmony and reaching feverish crescendos that felt as if the angels were conducting their erotic symphony. As they melted into a divine rhythm, Jane felt as if she merged into his heart. Within that place, she soared in the exquisite beauty of that singular moment, willing it to never end. She felt his essence inside her and as her body relaxed for a brief moment, she forgot all the struggles, the fears and the strategies. In that moment, there was only sweet peace and devotion.

Hank kissed her gently as he rolled onto the bed, drawing the covers toward them. He might have been thirteen years older than Jane, but to her, his body and mind seemed twenty years younger. However, the easygoing guy she knew was not completely there. His face was mapped with apprehension and prickles of fear.

“You were right,” he finally said, turning on his right side and looking at her. “I
did
get your message.” He reached under the covers and cupped his palm on her breast. “I kept telling myself it wasn’t real. But every time I started to worry about you, something inside of me put out the fire.”

“Where’d you feel it? Your head or your heart?”

Hank gave the question a serious moment of contemplation. “My heart. My mind chewed it but my heart digested it.”

Jane stared at the ceiling, blown away by his comment. “The heart and the mind,” she whispered.

He drew his finger between her breasts. “Hey,” he said, reeling her back into the moment. “I need to know, Jane. What happened?”

She’d rehearsed it in her head so many times over the past few hours but for some reason, it was all garbled now. Each time she reached for the lie, it eluded her.

“Jane?”

“Got a cigarette?”

“I don’t smoke. And last I heard, you quit.”

She managed a weak smile. “Right. I forgot.”

He waited. “You’re stalling. Why?”

Why wasn’t this easier, she wondered. She turned to him. “I found my car.”

“You’re kidding. Where?”

“A few miles from the Quik Mart.”

“Where is it now?”

“I got it parked a block west of here in a wooded area. If you know what you’re looking for, you can’t miss it.”

“Jane, you have to get it wiped for prints—”

“He wiped it clean. Totally clean. And he took everything in the car except my badge, and pistol. My bag and satchel were in the trunk.”

“Wait a second. It’s been four days, Jane. How does your driver’s license show up at a bus explosion?”

She turned back to the ceiling. “I’m not sure. When I found the car, he’d already changed the plates. The right rear tire had a flat. It was out of gas. So, I trekked back to the Quik Mart and bought a couple gallons and I guess it was either on the way there or back that I somehow dropped by license.” She let out a tired sigh. “By the time I got to the car and filled the tank and changed the tire, all I wanted to do was get on the road, find a gas station, top off the tank and keep going to New Mexico.”

“Okay,” he quietly offered. “I still don’t understand why you didn’t report it?”

She turned to him because she could tell the truth for a moment. “I didn’t know Harlan Kipple stole my car. I wasn’t listening to the radio. Jesus! I just found out in the last twelve hours that I died at some bus explosion.” She shook her head and stared back at the ceiling. “I just needed to get out of town.”

He never took his eyes off her. “So, how’s Wanda?”

She swallowed hard. There was no way she was going to concoct a story that wild. “I haven’t seen her yet.”

Hank studied Jane’s face. “Uh-huh. So what have you been doing for four days?”

“Jesus, you sound a fucking cop.”

“That’s ironic. Because you
don’t
sound like one.”

She turned to him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Your story has more holes than an old t-shirt.”

Jane gathered some attitude. “I didn’t know I was being interrogated.”

“Jane, please don’t make me pick apart your story.”

She threw back the covers and sat up in bed. Maybe, she thought, if there was greater distance between them, she could lie more convincingly. “I can’t believe this—”

He sat up. “That makes two of us. Let’s see, you don’t report the theft because you didn’t know it was Harlan Kipple who did it—”

She spun around to him. “I wanted to get back on the road and not have my car impounded for who knows how long while they sort it all out.”

“But you said you didn’t go to New Mexico. And if all he left you was your gun and your badge, that means he took your computer. The one with all your case files? If Kipple has your computer, he has access to hundreds of sensitive files. That alone would make you report it.”

She turned away as her heart raced. Her mouth went dry. She could fabricate another story that her computer was in her bag or satchel but she quickly realized she didn’t bring it with her from the other room. “Those files are backed up three different places—”

“That’s not the point, Jane, and you know it.” He waited. “You want me to continue?”

The walls were caving in quickly. “Continue what?”

“How about the fact that the bus crash was more than twenty miles from the Quik Mart? Didn’t you think I might look into that? You said you lost your ID between the Quik Mart and the car and you said that was a three mile trek.”

Jane stood up and slid her shirt over her head. “You know, Hank, you should shut down The Rabbit Hole and get back into fraud investigation. I think you miss it.” She plopped her bare ass on a chair and stared into the wall.

“Come on, Jane. Where have you been staying at night? Don’t they have televisions? Phones?”

“I’ve been living in my car, okay? Remember? I got my cash and credit cards stolen—”

“Yeah. How’d that go down?”

“What do you mean?”

“How’d you get ripped off?” His tenor was direct and impatient.

“I was parked in a vacant lot, trying to get some sleep and I hear a knock on the window and there’s a guy with a gun, demanding my wallet.”

“You know, I realize we haven’t known each other a long time but I would bet my sports bar that if you slept in your vehicle overnight in a vacant parking lot, you would have one eye open and your hand on your gun.”

God, he was right. That’s exactly what she’d do. “Well, I guess I fucked up then.”