“Can’t imagine why.”
Jones laughed, but laughed like you’d imagine a robot laughing, when it detected a joke, and laughter was the appropriate response.
“Give it another try.”
Val sat.
Move, spoon.
He wondered how much damage he could do with the spoon. Not enough to escape. Probably enough to annoy and anger them.
“Can I pick it up?” Val asked.
“Be my guest,” Jones said.
Val picked up the spoon. He exhaled on the bowl and balanced it on his nose for a moment. It sloped a little too gradually for that trick, and slid off, landing on the floor with a loud clang. Val stooped to pick it up, looking at the two men’s shiny, black polished shoes.
He set the spoon back on the desk. Maybe he should do this. He looked at the way the ambient lighting reflected off the bowl of the spoon. Or maybe he should tell them Felix was lying.
“Fuck this.” Val stood up again. Jones and Jones II tensed at his sudden movement, like a pair of spooked cats. “Take me back to the cell.”
“Val, it is not a cell. That is your room.”
“Room? Those have knobs on the insides of the doors. That’s a cell.”
They frowned at Val, and that frown ignited an angry fire behind Val’s sternum. “I’m not playing this game anymore. I don’t know what the point of your little test is. Whatever you think I can do, I can’t. I’m not your boy. Get me out of here.”
“We can do that. You told us you can make things move. We need to see how advanced your technique is.”
“No! This is garbage.”
Jones II reached out to Val, to calm him. He jerked his arm away and stepped back, stumbling over the chair, which only served to make him angrier. “Don’t touch me.”
“Easy,” Jones II spoke in a soothing tone. Coming from him, it sounded spooky and dishonest.
Looking around, Val realized he couldn’t tell the size of the room due to the white walls and floor. Sitting at the table he’d faced away from the door, now, turning back to it, he couldn’t make it out.
“Where’s the door?” he asked, his voice lilting up at the end in rising panic.
“Relax.”
“Where’s the
door
?”
“Right behind you. Right where you came in.”
Fuck, the room was small. It was like he was on top of the desk. He couldn’t even think. The walls were closing in on him, they were already there. Left, right, behind him…nothing but walls. White. Everything white. Jones and Jones II even looked pale in their black suits. The sweat poured from his forehead now, dripping from his nose.
He placed his hands on the wall and faltered, it was farther away than it looked. It surprised him, a moment of nothing, when he trusted he’d meet the wall and met only air. Behind he heard a small clattering, and thought nothing of it because he saw a thin black line of shadow outlining the door. It grounded him, and he turned to face Jones and Jones II. They would let him out, and it would happen now.
They peered at him.
“We will take you back to your room now.”
“Damn straight, you will.”
“And I will find you some magazines.”
The door slid open, and Val stepped into the hall, face to face with the armed guard. The guard’s fingers twitched on the rifle (was it made of
plastic?
), but a look from Jones II stayed his hand.
They left Jones I behind, and resumed their walk down the long hall. It took less time to get back to the room than Val remembered. The guard stayed behind at the first door. They entered the space between, waited for the door behind them to close completely, and then the second door opened. Someone made the bed while Val was gone. He hoped they’d given him clean sheets. How did laundry work in space, anyway?
“Are you all right?” Jones II asked. “Do you need a sedative?”
“No. I’m good.” Another sedative would mean more tests while he slept. It also meant more dreams. Neither one sounded terribly enticing. “What about TV? Or something to read. Anything.”
“Magazines.”
“Please.”
“Anything else?”
“Clean clothes?”
Jones II nodded.
Val took a deep breath when the door closed behind him. He looked at the camera, and went into the bathroom. He closed the door, and turned on the shower, as hot as it would go. He braced his back on the door and slid down onto his haunches. Reaching up to the sink, he picked up a bar of soap and set it on the clean white linoleum in front of him. The white wrapper was a shade darker than the floor, and Val relished the contrast. The steam from the hot shower collected as a fine mist in the air.
“Move, soap.”
When he’d made the spoon move, when he’d slammed his fists into the wall, he hadn’t spoken aloud. Nor had he spoken aloud when he took control of Maria’s knife.
The soap did not move. He was sure he’d made the spoon fall when he got angry. It couldn’t have been a coincidence. And they’d expected him to be able to do it, and they’d let him go as soon as it dropped. When he’d moved the knife, he’d been in a blind panic. Thinking he killed all those people. Thanks, Space Puma.
Move, soap.
He shoved harder, crinkling his nose with the effort. A warming sensation grew. He pictured the atoms. It had to have something to do with movement on an atomic level…right? It sounded good, anyway. He pictured the atoms, in his mind they were little white balls, and he visualized them moving, all together, and the soap, wrapper included, shifting its location in space. Go, soap, go.
It moved! He moved the soap!
But it felt like he’d moved a damned Volkswagen. His muscles felt all trembly, he felt weak like a kitten and his stomach churned. He’d seen it move, though, and it had made a faint scraping sound on the floor.
Great.
The bar of soap moved a quarter of an inch, if that. It wasn’t even a cool party trick to do at the bar, because someone would accuse him of bumping the table with his knee, or something. He picked up the soap with his hand (much easier) and set it on the edge of the sink. He could smell his shirt as he stripped it off, reminiscent of onions, and he dropped it in the corner. He looked at himself in the mirror. Wondered if he could crack it, just by looking at it. It would put him to sleep to do so. His eyes were red and bleary; it looked like he’d burst another blood vessel in one. Reaching up, he rubbed at them for a good long time before tugging down his pants and boxers.
By the time Jones II returned with an issue of
Good Housekeeping
from October of 2004, a pair of khakis and a plain white T-shirt, Val, who lay on the bed in a towel, staring at the ceiling, had a plan.
He thanked Jones II, and took his spoils. He waited for him to leave, then dressed in view of the camera. They wanted a show? Val Slade could deliver a show. He even picked up the magazine, sat at the little table where he ate breakfast, and read about money-saving tips using household items.
It had become a waiting game, and the plan relied on him not being in this room. He found himself dozing off over an advice column about a woman wondering if she could, in good conscience, substitute dessert forks for regular forks at a dinner party. The answer, politely, was no. Val could hold out as long as they could. He was cold as ice. He had a plan. This whole thing was in the bag, baby.
Val’s icy demeanor lasted until he finished reading the magazine (for the second time) and he woke up screaming from another white nightmare. He hadn’t sweated nearly as much this time, but he’d fallen asleep in the chair with his head on his hands on the table, and he banged his knee on one of the legs when he woke up. He could still feel the screams dying in this throat, could see the little empty black smiles on gray skin. He shivered in the hum of the air conditioner.
The bounds of his ability were tight. He needed to figure something small, but effective. He could close off the aorta, just for a moment. The guard would pass out, and he could run. It nagged at him that he’d have to stick around to reopen the aorta and he would lose valuable time. But he wasn’t about to go around killing any more people. No sir. Val Slade? Not going to become a killer. Though…were they people?
There wouldn’t be time to stick around to rouse the guard, to rouse Jones II, or whoever was with him. Hell, he didn’t even know if he had it in him to do more than one of them. He suspected killing one of them would diminish their hospitality, whoever
they
were.
He wondered what Kate was doing, right now. Since he had no concept of time, she could be doing anything. Was she worried? She must be.
He wondered what Felix was doing. That sonofabitch would pay. Val waited, head on his knees.
30
The little one-story adobe sheriff’s office never seemed welcoming to Kate, and today was no different. She parked Val’s truck in one of the street-side spaces out front, and threw all her weight into the parking brake. It tended to stick.
She sat for a moment, regarding the building. The sun was low in the sky, casting long shadows. The sheriff’s office was front-lit, the tan adobe seeming to glow in the pinkish light. Locking the door behind her out of habit, she squared her shoulders and headed in. It was only Spence. And it wasn’t as though she were driving the car with the rotting body inside it.
Daphne sat at the front desk behind bulletproof glass, looking blob-like in her chair; her hair dyed a glaring red never found in nature. Daphne had been pissed when they outlawed smoking in the work place, and her flabby jaws worked at a piece of gum.
“Haven’t seen him, Kate,” she said, barely looking up from her computer screen.
“Can I see Spence?”
Daphne did not look up, but raised her penciled-on eyebrows, reminding Kate why she’d left this shitty little town in the first place.
“Let me see if he’s available.” Daphne picked up the phone, started to dial, looked at Kate and said, “Have a seat.” Kate sat, glad her taxes no longer went to this woman’s salary. She picked up a new issue of
People
and flipped through the pages, not registering any of the glossy images before her. She peered over at Daphne, who had resumed a vacant stare at the computer screen.
There was a click of a lock, and the door opened. Spence popped his head out, and called to her. She resisted the urge to flip Daphne the bird, and followed him.
“Have you heard anything?” she asked.
A fellow in a blue FBI windbreaker hurried past them.
“What’s the FBI doing here?” When a small town had three—four, if you counted Val—missing persons in a few days, she guessed the FBI would get involved.
“First National Bank stuff.” Spence hurried her into the tiny office he shared with Harvey, who was mercifully not in at the moment. Was that what they wanted her to think? She sat, crossing her arms across her chest, hunching her shoulders forward. The old window air-conditioner blocked most of the natural light and hummed louder than most. Someone had placed a tray below it to catch its drippings.
“I haven’t heard anything from him. I did wander into Woodstone’s on my way in, and I didn’t see him there. Rick Juarez was working the bar, and he said he hadn’t seen Val.”
“That’ll set the gossip mill churning.”
“Oh, probably. But my hands are pretty well tied until tomorrow. Because I like you—and because Val seemed so twitchy—I’m making a bit of an exception. All I can do is ask around. Have you tried calling this Felix back? See if he’s heard anything?”
“No.” She’d thought of it, but it seemed intrusive.
“Why don’t you start there? Wouldn’t you feel silly if Val was flaking out on you?”
Her face burned, and she knew she was blushing. She pulled out her phone, and kind of turned away from Spence. She faced Harvey’s desk, which had a big “terrorist hunting permit” poster behind the desk. The number was third on her list of dialed calls, and she selected it. It rang several times, then a recorded operator said: “The number you dialed is no longer in service. Please hang up and try again.”
She swiveled in her chair and looked back at Spence. “It’s been disconnected.”
“Let me make a call to USCIS. I want to speak to this Vargas guy.”
Kate nodded and sat back in her chair.
Spence asked to speak to the guy then made a chorus of “uh-huh”s, and incredulous sounding “really”s. He drummed on his desk with a pen, the tempo picking up.
He returned the phone to its cradle with a click. “I think we have a problem. Officer Vargas wasn’t working this morning. In fact, Officer Vargas has been out of the office for the last few weeks going through chemotherapy. For lung cancer.”
“So who took Val?” Kate asked.
“An excellent question. I’m going to see if I can flag down Taylor. This’ll tickle him much more than the bank bullshit.”
“Taylor’s the FBI guy?” Kate asked, the saliva draining from her mouth. What if they wanted to come out to the house? What if they wanted to search the car?
“Yeah, this is serious business.”
She didn’t want serious business. She wanted Spence, Val’s old buddy. God, how to get rid of the car? Rich would know, but she couldn’t ask him. Would you get red flagged somewhere for Googling “How to dispose of car”?
“Wait here,” Spence said, hefted his not-inconsiderable bulk out of his chair and lumbered out of the room.
This was all way too much. She picked up her cell phone and tried Felix’s number again. Same results as last time.
Spence came back with the FBI guy in tow. He was clean-cut and handsome, looking like an overgrown boy scout. With a firm handshake he introduced himself as Special Agent Taylor Anderson.
Then he perched on the edge of Harvey’s desk, putting Kate in the middle, where she had to scoot her chair back in order to see both men at once. They filled him in on what had happened to Val, and he took a few notes into a smart phone.
“This guy is bold,” Anderson said. “Did you guys check his creds?”
“When was the last time we checked yours? Cooper put him through, and I glanced at his badge, which seemed to be legit.”
“Cooper will be lucky if he keeps his job. Did you see what this guy was driving? Can you give a description of him?”
“He had a Crown Vic.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“We use Impalas.”
“Some of our guys are getting Chargers. Nice cars. Gives you a bit of an edge in a chase.”
Kate wanted to scream at them. Who cares what they’re driving! Cars, of course made her think of her own car, which she didn’t want to be thinking of here and now.
“Did you get the plate number?” Kate asked.
“It was a government car. Blue plates.”
“I wonder if Vargas is all right. We should check up on him.” Anderson made another note on his phone.
“Kate, I think you can go home, at this point.”
“I can’t,” she said.
We were supposed to have left by now.
“There’s not a lot we need for you to do.”
“I can’t leave…” she let her voice trail off.
“You might want to be at home in case he comes in on his own,” said Anderson.
“Okay,” she said, not relishing the idea of going back there and waiting. “You have my phone number in case you hear anything?”
And with that, they dismissed her. Daphne was gone for the evening and Cooper, the dumb hick shit that had let Val go with some imposter, sat at the desk. He waved at her and she ignored him, moving past without making eye contact. He was lucky she didn’t fling herself over the counter and claw his eyes out.
The forty-minute ride out to Val’s place gave her too much time to think. Pulling into the driveway, her headlights swept her car, the burned-out barn, and the yellow-green reflection of a pair of glowing eyes near the door. Something tan dashed away, too fast for her to get a good look at it. Could have been a deer. Nevertheless, she pulled up as close as she could get to the trailer. She tried to peer into the night, but the truck’s headlights reflected off the siding, killing her night vision. She killed the engine, keeping her hand on the key in case she needed to get away fast. The engine ticked as it cooled, and she turned off the headlights. She peered out at the night. The shapes of the land, the dry brush and the big stones were familiar by day, but tonight they seemed alien, as though they only served to conceal the monster.
She could get a hotel room in town. It would break the bank, but she could manage. She’d be sleeping with the pistol under her pillow tonight. If she slept at all.
The night was barren and quiet, and the squeak of the door’s hinges made her cringe. She sprinted, whether she needed to or not, reaching up (since there was no front step) and jamming the key in the lock, willing it to turn. She stumbled into the quiet trailer and slammed the door behind her. She clicked on the light, listening to herself pant.
Now what?