The Enigmatologist (24 page)

“We
only want
Leadbelly
,” Colonel Hollister said into a
megaphone. “Hand him over and you can go.”

“John, we only have to hang on for a few more minutes,”
Leadbelly
said, leaning between the front seats.

“Oh, we’re fucked,” Professor Gentry said, pushing
Leadbelly
out of the way. “John, we give them
Leadbelly
we’re as good as dead. We’re fucked.”

“No one’s going anywhere,” John said, confident Colonel
Hollister was just trying to intimidate them, like when he broke into John’s
motel room. John flexed his hand and smirked.

Colonel Hollister spoke into the megaphone again, “I’m
only
gonna
say this one more time, hand over
Leadbelly
!”

“Eat shit, Colonel!” Sheriff Masters shouted, then
chuckled.

“Yeah, that’ll convince him,” John said.

Colonel Hollister punched Corporal
McGillis
with his megaphone. He gestured to a soldier standing nearby.

“Hey, Sheriff,” John said, “isn’t that one of the guys
from the bar?”

“That
sonuvabitch
should be in
my jail.”

The soldier stepped forward and grinned as he raised his
M4 assault rifle to his shoulder. He aimed it at the car, not like a movie
villain with the rifle at his hip, or a handgun turned sideways, he held it at
his shoulder, secure, like someone trained to kill.

“Get down!” John shouted, ducking under the dash.
“Everybody get down!”

They flattened, shrank, crumpled among the litter on the
car’s floor, hoping they were fully hidden and that no part of them remained
exposed, no matter how small a target it might be.

The soldier fired. Bullets shook the car, miniature
collisions at five thousand feet per second. The Saturn sedan screamed as metal
was ripped apart, sacrificed for Colonel Hollister’s violent version of an
Elvis obsession.

“That was just a warning!” Colonel Hollister said. “Next
time, he’ll take out more than your engine.”

John peeked above the dash. The windshield was still
intact. No bullet holes. Gray clouds floated from the front of the car, mixing
with atmosphere, automotive souls escaping Earth. The sedan’s front was
destroyed, metal punctured by faster moving metal. Fluids, some green, some
clear, leaked onto the ground, smelling like a chemical fire.

Rooftop and John’s mom had bought the sedan for him as a
high school graduation present, something for him to drive to Boulder and back.
At first he was indifferent, the color and interior symbolizing weekend soccer
matches and ten-percent-off coupons and PTA meetings. Over time, he grew to
love the car for its normalcy, blending in at the shopping malls, an artist
undercover in Middle-America. Looking at his wrecked car, John felt despondent,
knowing he would never drive it to garage sales, flea markets, or comic book
shops again.

“Holy shit! Is everyone alright?” Sheriff Masters asked,
sweating, breathing heavily, like he’d wrestled a pig and lost.

The only time John had been shot at had been in video
games, where health packs and cheat codes gave him extended lives. He raised
himself onto his seat, shaking slightly, knowing there were no floating red
crosses hiding between vehicles. The journal lay at his feet and John picked it
up. He flicked a desiccated French fry from the leather binding and reminded
himself of everything Archibald Abernathy had chronicled.

“Man, we just need a few more minutes,”
Leadbelly
said. “Then my ride will be here.”

“The cavalry isn’t coming,” Professor Gentry said. “We’re
fucked.”

Soldiers rushed them from both sides, aiming M4’s,
standing like heavily armed statues. Calm and in control, Colonel Hollister
approached the car. “In case you didn’t notice before, you’re surrounded. Drop
your guns or be shot.”

“John, Sheriff,”
Leadbelly
said
from the backseat. “Man, I’ll go with them.”

“Don’t do it,” Professor Gentry said. “This guy’s our only
leverage. We give him up, we’re dead.”

“It’s alright, man. I’ll be okay,”
Leadbelly
said.

“What about me?” Professor Gentry asked. “I mean us.”

“John here’s my great-great-nephew, man. You think I’d let
anything happen to him?”

“You really want me to answer that?” John asked. He tossed
his shotgun out the window and raised his hands. “Alright, Hollister. We’re
coming out. Don’t shoot.”

A soldier opened the car door and yanked John out. They
did the same to the sheriff,
Leadbelly
, and Professor
Gentry.

“Get your goddamn hands off me,” the sheriff said, elbows
flailing as he was pulled from the car. “I’m the goddamn sheriff in this
county.”

“I don’t know these guys,” Professor Gentry said, as he
was pulled from the car. “I was hitchhiking. They picked me up outside of
town.”

The soldiers answered Professor Gentry’s protests by
shoving him to the front of the sedan. John expected them to laugh or joke like
schoolyard bullies hopped up on candy bars, Jolt Cola, and negligent parenting.
Instead, they behaved professionally, quiet and courteous, as they ushered all
four men to the front of the car.

One of the soldiers frisked John, finding the gun and
journal hidden under his hoodie. He handed the journal to Colonel Hollister.
The colonel smiled covetously, like it was a once-in-a-lifetime find.

“I’ve been looking for this for a long time,” he said.
“I’d seen the entries Archibald Abernathy sent the Lincolns. We found them
buried in the National Archives. He stopped sending them updates when he
arrived in Las Vegas. When he reappeared in Denver, agents were sent to
retrieve his journal. Everyone thought it was lost when his house burned, but I
knew better. I knew this was out here.”

He stared at it, his eyes fixed on the fragile pages.

Watching Colonel Hollister turn the pages, the wonder in
his eyes, John realized he never saw the sections of the journal written after
Archibald arrived in New Mexico, the entries where he described his life with
the Sagittarians, where he mentioned Rosa.

“And Rosa? how did you know about her?” John asked, glancing
at the soldier from the bar.

“We’d been watching
Leadbelly
for several weeks, tracking his movements. He visited her quite often,
sometimes at her restaurant, sometimes at her home. When you told me he’d left
town, which, by the way, I knew you were lying, not very smart, I had to send
my men to retrieve her, see if she had any information about him. I was sure
she knew something. I don’t believe in coincidences, John.” Colonel Hollister
gently turned the journal’s pages, touching only the corners, stopping on a
passage mentioning Rosa. “And apparently I’m right not to.” He read for a
moment, then carefully closed the book.

Rosa had a life before him. As John thought this, the
fever of envy burned in his chest. He knew it was natural, that when you meet
someone you never really know their past, that it becomes untangled the more
you open up to someone, and they open themselves to you. He had wanted to learn
all her secrets, discover everything he could about her. He had even
anticipated having that awkward, ‘how many have you been with?’ conversation.
But
Leadbelly
? The thought of the two of them
together made him cringe and wonder if he should get tested. He trusted that
Rosa was selective, had chosen him over the other men in town, including
Leadbelly
. Still, he couldn’t help resenting the man in the
sequined jumpsuit for the shared experiences he had with her.

“Gentlemen.” Colonel Hollister walked up to them, holding
the journal at his waist with both hands. “Did you really think you could
escape?”

The sheriff laughed like he just remembered a joke and
wanted to share it.

“Do you find something funny, Sheriff Masters?”

“Yeah,” the sheriff said, smirking. “You need to know
something. Everything you’ve been doing, all the cover-ups, that reporter kid’s
murder, they’re about to be blown wide open. We’re supposed to meet a member of
the press in Santa Fe, and if we don’t show,
Leadbelly’s
story’s
gonna
be published in tomorrow’s paper.”

“No, it won’t,” John said.

Between two Humvees, the click of a Zippo. Embers of a lit
cigarette glowed, a small, orange circle in the darkness. John had never seen
him before, but he knew who he was. The only person who knew their escape
route.

“Why don’t you just get out here?” John said, defeated.
All his plans and hopes for escaping from town, the case, his job, were edited
away to nothing.

A man, standing between two Humvees, stepped into the
light. He wore a dark blue suit, casually smoking among starched uniforms.

“Rex Grant,” John said, “the minute I saw the Hummers, I
knew you’d sold me out. How long have you been selling information to the Air
Force?”

“I didn’t sell them anything,” he said. “I work for them.”

“John,” Colonel Hollister said, “I’d like to introduce you
to Lieutenant Rex Grant, head of the Air Force Special Services, Propaganda
Department, specializing in plausible deniability, or as they’re more commonly
known,
The National Enquirer
.”

“You see,” Lieutenant Grant said, walking closer, taking a
drag off his cigarette, “people want to believe there’s more to the world than
what they see, that something is being kept from them. My job is to give them a
version that’s just enough reality, just enough fantasy to keep them making the
wrong guesses, distracting them from the work we really do.”

“You used me. You lied to me,” John said. He’d been
betrayed by someone who created stories of snow monsters pitching in the World
Series and conveyed them as legitimate news.

“Don’t feel bad. We’ve been doing this for years, since
Roswell, when we went by our original name, Majestic-12.”

“I knew Majestic-12 was real,” Professor Gentry said, like
having his assumptions confirmed was a personal triumph.

“We had to change it,” Lieutenant Grant said. He dropped
his cigarette, twisted it into the dirt with his shoe. “It sounded too
conspiratorial, like an actual government program.
The National Enquirer
sounds more credible, don’t you think?”

“You used me,” John said. “You used Rooftop.”

“We needed an impartial third party to research the Elvis
pictures, just in case we found one of the body doubles.”

“You already found him, had people staking out his
trailer.”

“Colonel Hollister’s men tend to be a little heavy handed.”
He glanced at the soldier who shot up the car.

“When you showed at
Leadbelly’s
trailer,” Colonel Hollister said, “I expected you to be a typical detective, a
bottom feeder, but instead I got you. I got an Abernathy.”

“So, did you trick me into coming down so you could kill
me, too? like that kid in the desert? Has this whole thing been a giant
set-up?” John asked, taking a step forward. A soldier put his hand on John’s
chest, attempting to restrain him. John knocked it away. Guns were raised at the
edge of his vision, and John grinned and thought about how he could release a
pheromone that would cause the heavily armed soldiers to make out with each
other.

“John, I didn’t know how special you are,” Lieutenant
Grant said.

“Special? I just write puzzles,” John said. He stared at
Rex Grant, wishing Sagittarians had laser vision.

“I don’t have the proper clearance. And I never used your
name in any of my reports. Colonel Hollister didn’t even know I’d contracted
you to investigate the photo. He only briefed me on you after you showed at
Leadbelly’s
trailer.”

“What about the reporter? Did you have a file on him,
too?”

“The kid was never real. Talking on the phone, I knew
you’d never come down here. So we fabricated the story, found some drifter,
someone no one would miss, cleaned him up, dressed him like a college kid, shot
him, and left his body by the road, somewhere he could be found. Local cops did
all the paperwork, making him bait. You gave me everything I needed when you
asked if I’d sent a reporter down here. Now that kid is dead because of you.”