Maggie O Dell 09 Hotwire

photos of different sizes and shapes. Amanda as a baby. Mrs. Griffin with her extended family, all dressed up and smiling. A wedding photo of Cynthia and Mike Griffin. More of Amanda in various stages of childhood. And then one photo caught Maggie’s eye.

Three soldiers in military fatigues stood in front of a tank with a stark background that looked like miles and miles of sand. The one in the middle was a young Mike Griffin, his arms around the other two and smiling for the camera.

She almost glanced away, then realized the man on Griffin’s left was also familiar. She took a closer look but there was no mistake. The man was Frank Skylar.

FIFTY-TWO

Wesley Stotter couldn’t believe his eyes. He had already snapped more than fifty photos and was worried he’d run out of disc space on his digital camera.

He had brought along a pry bar but was surprised to find the back door unlocked. A keypad at the door implied security access. He suspected someone must be on the complex grounds and had stepped out for a minute; however, Stotter hadn’t seen any movement. If he ran into a worker he’d pretend to be lost. What was that old saying, “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission”?

The outside of the building had been so plain. Inside, Stotter was surprised to find whitewashed walls and an impressive labyrinth of stainless-steel counters topped with strange equipment and utensils that looked like a surgical suite. The counters were intersected with cylindrical tanks, some small, some large. Several stretched from floor to ceiling. They were filled with liquid and each had objects floating inside. All of them emitted an eerie blue glow— probably a fluorescent light somewhere inside each tank.

A built-in wall cabinet with a padlocked glass front displayed an array of other equipment that Stotter had never seen before. At first glance the stuff reminded him of something out of a Star Wars movie. Or—and this was what excited Stotter—perhaps weapons taken from a downed and disabled alien spacecraft. One appeared to be a scoped rifle but made of a strange metal and with an odd attachment on the barrel. At the stock, an electrical cord—only thicker— connected the rifle to what looked like a canvas backpack.

Hanging beside the rifle were several different pairs of goggles. Stotter squatted to study them. One pair had bulbous dark-green lenses with pinpoint red dots in each. Night-vision goggles, he suspected, and he wondered if these were what he had seen on the creature running in the forest. Was it only a man, after all?

Before he moved on to the next room he wanted to get closer shots of the tanks. He adjusted his camera to twilight mode so he could capture the images despite the fluorescent blue glow. He hadn’t noticed until his fingers stumbled over the settings that his hands were shaking. His shirt had become glued to his back and his beard was damp with sweat as well.

He thought he heard a door open and he stopped.

Car stalled. Lost my way. He tried to prepare his story while he drew closer to the tanks. Just fascinated by everything you have here—that’s what he would tell them. But he needed to stow the camera in his backpack or certainly they’d take it away from him.

He glanced around and didn’t see anyone. Maybe it was his imagination again. An electrical motor began to hum and a fan above him came on. Stotter let out a breath and wiped his forehead. Of course, it was just the equipment turning on and off. But still he needed to be quick. He shouldn’t press his luck.

In the first tank huge plant leaves floated, layers and layers of them. Gorgeous, unusual large leaves with blood-red veins running throughout. The liquid in the tank kept them perfectly preserved. He snapped a few photos and moved on to the next.

He stared for a few minutes at the next tank. Five very different objects, different sizes, shapes, and consistencies. They looked organic but almost translucent, the blue glow shining through in areas and highlighting what looked like a network of veins and blood vessels. Again he squatted to study them from below and that’s when he recognized the object right in front of him. The shock made him jerk backward. His knees gave out and sent him sprawling. He dropped his camera and it skidded just out of reach.

Another motor turned on somewhere in the building, and yet Stotter didn’t take his eyes off the object.

He hadn’t been able to identify it at first. But even from this angle—his butt on the cold tile floor—Stotter could tell that what he was looking at was an eyeball.

He crawled to his knees, still not taking his eyes off the tank and examining the other floating objects. Now he could make an educated guess as to what they were. He needed to focus as he tried to remember everything that was missing whenever a rancher found a mutilated cow. Because Stotter was pretty sure he had just found some of those missing pieces.

He continued staring as he reached out and searched for his camera. It had fallen close by. Still on his knees, he swiped his hand across the floor. That’s when a heavy boot came down on his knuckles and Stotter heard the cracking of his own fingers.

His yelp of pain was cut short by a second boot that caught him under the chin and snapped his head back.

FIFTY-THREE

“Sheriff Skylar didn’t mention that he served with your husband,” Maggie said, noticing a second photo of the same three men, only in this one they wore hunting gear, including camouflage clothing. They stood next to a deer that had been strung up from a tree. Skylar and the other man held rifles. Mike Griffin stood in the middle again, holding one of the biggest hunting knives Maggie had ever seen.

“Oh yes.” Mrs. Griffin came up beside Maggie and her index finger brushed the frame of the first photo. Her finger traveled down the length of the third man, a stranger Maggie didn’t recognize. The gesture of affection seemed odd, but Maggie saw true emotion for the first time in Cynthia Griffin’s face.

She glanced up at Maggie but didn’t appear embarrassed or apologetic.

“Mike, Frank, and my first husband, Evan, served in Desert Storm,” she explained. “This was taken right before they came back. Unfortunately Evan didn’t come home with them.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Evan and Griff were engineers. The National Guard was supposed to be just for playing weekend soldier. That’s what Evan told me when he joined.”

“Mom?”

Cynthia Griffin jumped and that was the last uncontrolled emotion Maggie would witness for the day.

“Oh, Mandy. Agent O’Dell wants to talk with you again.”

“If this is about Courtney and Nikki, I don’t know anything.”

“No, I’m not here to ask you about them.”

The girl couldn’t disguise her relief though she tried to, pushing at her hair that, although washed and combed today, still fell conveniently into her eyes. Her skin looked healthier and her eyes weren’t bloodshot, pupils not dilated.

Maggie waited for Mrs. Griffin to instruct her daughter where to sit and reminded her about the coffee being her favorite as she placed a cup on the matching saucer in front of Amanda.

“You haven’t eaten anything all day.” Mrs. Griffin fussed as she slid one of the beautiful pastries closer to her daughter.

“I don’t want to talk about Johnny, either,” Amanda said, but this time to her mother.

“Tell you what,” Maggie said, coming around the glass coffee table to sit across from Amanda, “I promise none of my questions will be about Johnny or Courtney or Nikki. I won’t even ask about Thursday night.”

Amanda peered out from under the strand of hair and this time she tucked it behind her ear.

“Okay,” she agreed. “What do you want to know?”