Lord, what a kid.
Billy stopped hammering and checked the fit of the boards, making sure they were flush.
“You're not having second thoughts, are you?” he asked.
“About the party?”
“Yeah.”
“It's a bit late if I was, don't you think?”
“It's never too late,” he said. “If you're not sure about it, then it's probably something we need to talk about.”
“I'm okay, Billy. Really, I'm fine.”
He looked me in the eye, then nodded. He went back to work.
I sat there with my eyes closed, letting the sun warm my face and my arms until I heard a car pull up.
“Looks like Chunk's here,” Billy said.
“Yeah.” To Connie, I said, “Honey, Uncle Reggie's here.”
She jumped to her feet and sprinted across the spread of purple horsemint flowers that had grown up in the yard.
Chunk rounded the side of the house just as Connie ran up to me.
“Hi, Uncle Reggie,” she said.
Chunk was carrying a medium-sized white cardboard box, and Connie went for it immediately.
“Did you bring me something for my birthday?” she asked.
“No,” he said, smiling down at her. “This is for your Mom. I'm bringing you something special tomorrow, though.”
Chunk handed me the box, shook hands with Billy. I glanced into the box and saw everything I needed for Connie's cake.
I nodded a thank you to him. He just smiled.
I took the box into the kitchen, put up the stuff that had to be refrigerated, and then went back out to the yard with glasses for everyone and the pitcher of iced tea.
Billy said, “You want a slice of lime with that?”
“With my tea?”
“Yeah, last time I was at the center, they had these huge five pound bags of them for sale. I bought two.”
“Yeah, but in my tea?”
“Okay,” said Billy. “Suit yourself. It's good though.”
He cut up a lime with his pocket knife and handed me a wedge. Billy and I both took our tea with lime.
Next came the awkward ritual of drinking while wearing a surgical mask. The way we all kind of learned to do it was by turning our heads a little to one side while we lifted our masks and took quick sips. It was all kind of silly when you stopped to think about it, though none of us did. It was just one of those things that had become part of the invisible constructs of our lives in the plague city.
“I got a call from Myers last night,” I said.
“Oh yeah? What'd he want?”
“To tell me that someone had taken the hard drives from Bradley's three laptops. The way he sounded, I think he thinks we did it.”
“Us?”
I shrugged. “Who knows? Paranoia seems to be going around.”
“I guess.” He sipped at his tea. We all did.
“Still,” I said, “it's strange about the hard drives. Why would somebody take them? If whoever did it knew enough to take the hard drives out, why not take the whole computer?”
“Are you talking about looters?” Billy asked.
“I'm not sure,” I said. “It doesn't sound like something they'd do, you know? Their style would be to steal everything.”
“Or maybe just trash it,” Chunk said. “Smash it just to hear it shatter.”
“Yeah, that's true.”
“You said some specimen traps were taken too?” Billy asked.
“All of them.”
“Why?”
“I don't know,” I said. “Maybe they weren't stolen. Maybe Bradley put them back out after she took the first batch of specimens out for testing.”
“She'd have mentioned that in her journal,” Chunk said.
He was right about that, of course. Despite the enigmatic 'WE ARE ALL GONERS!' Bradley was very organized in her journal. She would have included something as basic as putting out fresh traps.
“So, who would want to steal the hard drives to three laptop computers and six specimen cages?” Billy asked. “Why those things and nothing else?”
“It has to be because of what she was working on,” Chunk said. “That has to be it.”
“So, where does that leave us?” I asked.
“It's either somebody she was working with or against.”
“Against? You mean like Cole?”
“I like him for this,” Chunk said.
I liked him too, only I was still troubled by the idea of a 70 year old man beating Kenneth Wade to death with his bare hands. That part just didn't make sense, and I said so.
Chunk didn't have an answer for me.
“But speaking of Wade,” he said after a moment, “on the way over here I got a call from Treanor. He wants us in his office on Monday morning.”
“Great. There isn't any way that's gonna be good.”
“Treanor's that lieutenant you told me about?” Billy asked.
“That's him.” To Chunk, I said, “Did he say what he wanted?”
“I doubt it's to play canasta,” Chunk said. “I think you really pissed him off this time.” Chunk turned to Billy and said, “You really ought to tell your wife to stop pissing off the brass.”
“I wish I could,” Billy said. “But you know how women are. They're not happy unless they're complaining about something.”
I threw my wedge of lime at him.
Connie got bored fast listening to the adults talk and started to fidget.
“Honey,” I said, “why don't you take your binoculars and try to find me an oriole.”
She liked that, I could tell, but then got a real serious look on her face and said, “Mommy, the orioles like to nest in the cypress down by the river, and Daddy told me not to go down there alone.”
Billy smiled at me.
“That's right, hon,” I said. “How about that blue jay from earlier? Can you find him again?”
“Okay,” she said, brightening. The next instant she was off, running through the backyard, leaping over Billy's coffins. Billy and I both watched her go, then gave each other a glance. Go ahead, my look said to him. Now's as good a time as any.
Billy nodded, wet his lips with his iced tea. He said, “Connie and I went down to the creek yesterday with her binoculars.”
I looked into my tea. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Chunk look at Billy, then at me. This was leading into something, he just couldn't tell what.
Chunk said, “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Billy said. “You know, once you get down to the creek, it's only about a third of a mile to the wall.”
“Really?” Chunk said. “I didn't know it was that close.”
“Oh yeah. With a pair of good binoculars you can see just about every little detail in the wall. Of course, you can't go much closer than that or the motion sensors will activate and the helicopters will blast your ass to a mud puddle, but you can see the wall plain as day.”
