HAROLD, HECTOR and MALCOLM are having breakfast at the diner beside Merle’s Shut Eye Motel. MALCOLM is reading his email (he finds that ALPHONSE has received his report and forwarded it to agents with the appropriate skills for analysis) and HAROLD is reading the local papers (Groversville doesn’t have its own paper, but there are copies of the Nashville & Cookeville daily newspapers for sale). Suddenly, a rental LeBaron careens into the parking lot and stops abruptly. HANNIBAL and MASON step out.
“We’ve got a little time until our meeting with the Sheriff. We have some information,” says HANNIBAL.
MALCOLM looks around for a private booth, away from other patrons, where they can talk.
“Nope, book says we discuss it in the car,” says HANNIBAL, “away from prying ears.” He steps back outside and gets back in the driver’s seat. The rest of the agents get in the car too. HANNIBAL starts the engine and recklessly backs out of the lot.
“What’s that smell?” says HAROLD. “Is someone wearing Brut?”
“You’ve been drinking,” says MALCOLM. “You should let Seth drive.”
“Call me ‘MASON’,” corrects MASON.
“Nope, he’s not on the insurance,” says HANNIBAL, as he accelerates from 55 to 65 mph.
“I’m not comfortable with this. I want you to stop the car and let me out,” says MALCOLM.
HANNIBAL puts on his seatbelt. “Are you calling me a drunk?” he asks, glaring at MALCOLM in the rear view mirror. He accelerates up to 75 mph. A state police cruiser passes by, and HANNIBAL blithely waves his badge out the window.
“MASON’s not on the insurance, and I’m not about to break the law for you,” says HANNIBAL. “Listen, I’ll slow it down, if it makes you feel better.” He drops his speed to 55.
HANNIBAL and MASON relate the details of their morning’s investigation while MALCOLM white-knuckles it in the back seat. HANNIBAL produces a framed picture of Jane Allen, taken when she was about 15. He smashes the glass to remove the photo and hands it to the agents in the back.
“Look, it’s almost time to meet the Sheriff.” They turn around and head to the Sheriff’s station.
A clerk greets them and then summons Sheriff Dan Oakley from his office. He had been told of their arrival the day before by Derringer.
“This is the first I’ve heard of a drug ring in Groversville,” says Oakley. HECTOR assures him that the ring is much wider than just Groversville, probably spanning many counties and possibly other states.
“We believe that the specific type of drug he was on gave him increased strength, perhaps due to an elevation of adrenaline.”
MALCOLM asks to look through the Sheriff’s files for cases in the last year, to see if he can spot any unusual occurrences that may have a bearing on their investigation. Oakley directs him to the file cabinet.
Over the course of their questioning, HECTOR becomes frustrated with the state of Oakley’s investigation. “Didn’t you ask Spivey’s friends about him? He kills someone in your town and you don’t follow up these leads?”
Oakley gets defensive. “Listen, mister, I spoke with the boy’s mother and investigated the house. Her sister and brother-in-law came to stay with her; they’re the only relatives and they’re from out of town, so the kid wasn’t there. I called the girlfriend’s house and her mother says she hasn’t seen him. I figure he’s out of my county, so it’s not my problem anymore. I alerted the state police, filed all the right paperwork. Look it up.”
HANNIBAL remembers that Sheriff is an elected position.
“What line of work were you in before you were Sheriff?” he asks.
“Same as my daddy. Run the Grain & Feed.”
“Oh, I can see how those fields are closely related,” says HANNIBAL, suddenly wishing he hadn’t left his flask in the car.
“Who are Spivey’s friends? Where would I find them?”
“The kids mostly hang out at the reservoir, up the hill from town. Can’t miss it.”
“Have their been any instances of livestock going missing? The reason I ask is that these drug dealers may be living in the woods, and using the animals for food.”
Oakley is incredulous. “Really? Living in the woods? I never heard of such a thing!”
“Then I trust your professional judgment. Never mind. Do you know of anyone who knows the area well, and maybe has a dog with a good nose?”
“Sure, Bob Gum, he’s a local farmer and one of my hunting buddies. I’ll let him know you’ll be calling him.” Oakley goes to his office, pulls a card from the rolodex and makes a call. He brings the number to HANNIBAL. “Here’s his number. He lives on the same side of town as the Spiveys.”
Meanwhile, MALCOLM happens to find some reports of livestock mutilation in the last several months. One of them was filed by Robert Gum himself. “Can you let me know if any more of these reports come in?” he asks. “Here is my card.”
“CDC! Wow, you come up from Atlanta?”
“No sir, Los Angeles office,” says MALCOLM politely.
They leave the station and decide to split up. MALCOLM wants to go back to Knoxville to run more tests on Spivey. MASON decides they need another rental car, so he travels back with MALCOLM to pick one up. H-Cell heads up to the reservoir.
There are a few people around, walking dogs or throwing Frisbees. The agents approach a kid about Spivey’s age.
“Yeah, that kid went to my school. He wasn’t in my class though. My friend Dave is friends with his friend Pete, though; Pete’s in his class. I recognized him in the paper.”
“Anything weird going on in town?” the agents ask.
“Well, except for that stupid YouTube thing. You know, with the UFOs? I never even SAW those guys before.”
The agents ask what YouTube thing he’s talking about. “Don’t you guys watch TV? It was on Jimmy Kimmel. My cousin lives in Nashville and he’s all like ‘Duh, I live in Groversville. I’m a retard.’”
“Do you think there are UFOs?” asks HECTOR.
“Well,” says the kid, philosophically, “I don’t think we’re alone…”
The kid says that there are more people here in the evening, after dinner. Probably some kids from Spivey’s class will be here then.
They return to the motel for lunch. HAROLD searches YouTube for “groversville jimmy kimmel” and finds the clip the teenager told them about. In it, a couple of country rubes rant and rave about a video of UFOs they filmed. The UFOs look like old fashioned pie plates, and at one point Kimmel stops the footage and a hint of string can be seen suspending the discs. Kimmel laughs while Sarah Silverman makes an obtuse reference to their proclivity for barnyard animals. He does some more searching, and finds the website of a Nashville-based UFO newsletter called Watch the Skies! The June issue is available, it says, but subscribe now before you miss the July issue which features a report by crack journalist Scott Adams, on location in Groversville, TN.
HECTOR and HANNIBAL take the car to visit Bob Gum, while HAROLD heads to Groversville District Vocational Institute, the local High School. There’s only one employee in the office, filing paperwork over the summer.
HAROLD asks for information about Jane Allen, and is given her transcript. She’s an average student, probably not college-bound. He picks up the yearbook and locates her grad picture, on the same page as Billy Ray Spivey’s. Looking through the book, he finds another picture of her, this time as part of the Girls Field Hockey team. He writes down the names of some of her teammates and goes through the phone book. Eventually, he speaks with a girl who says she is a friend of Jane’s, Katie McFadden.
McFadden spoke to Jane Allen about four days ago, after Spivey had left town. She said that Jane was very upset, and they talked about going into town to see a movie to take her mind off of it.
HAROLD asks if she ever mentioned if she saw Spivey during the two days that he vanished.
“No… That was weird, but I think it might have happened to her last month. She called me about going to lunch and it was like seven pm. I said ‘don’t you mean dinner’ and she’s like ‘no, it’s only 11 in the morning.’ It was really weird.”
“Was she in good health? Has she noticed any unusual medical problems?” asks HAROLD. McFadden seems a little reticent. “We’re investigating Billy Ray Spivey in relation to a drug ring. Is Jane involved with drugs?”
“No, she wouldn’t do drugs,” says McFadden finally. “She’s… She’s pregnant.”
HECTOR and HANNIBAL arrive at the Gum residence and ask if he knows Spivey or Allen. Bob Gum tells them he doesn’t, but he knows the area pretty well anyway. After having a scotch, he takes the agents out to the barn to see his cow Betsy.
“Damnedest thing,” he says. “I come out one morning and her udder, well, it’s there but the goddamn teats are missing.” HANNIBAL takes a photo of the affected udder. “But that’s not all, a calf come up to suckle, and this teat forms from outta nowheres, the calf gets her milk, and then it disappears again.” He admits he hasn’t drank the milk since the “modification” occurred. “I assumed it was some kinda cow disease, but then my neighbors, they start findin’ their animals cut up in strange ways out in the pasture, in ways a fox wouldn’t do, if ya get me.”
“There’s a lot of talk about UFOs,” the agents offer.
“Yeah, and I’ve seen lights in the sky myself. I think there’s a top-secret Air Force Base around here. You boys would probably know more about that then me though, right?”
“If we did, we couldn’t tell you,” says HANNIBAL jovially. “Which way did these lights go?”
“West, over the hills.”
“Oh yeah, we REALLY can’t tell you about THOSE lights. [laughs] If you don’t mind, we’d like to take your bloodhound out to the highway and see if we can find any trace of the Allen girl.”
Bob Gum agrees, and they pile into his truck with his dog in the back. They return to the Allen house to find an item of clothing with her scent, and are greeted by her mother again. She remembers they were there some hours ago, and is generally aware that time has passed since then. Jane has still not come home, she says. After some prompting, she agrees that that is unusual, and that maybe she should be concerned. The agents head back to the highway and walk up and down, following as the dog tries to pick up a scent.
HAROLD walks back to the motel and asks about a visitor called Scott Adams, flashing his FBI badge. The receptionist tells him that Adams is staying in room 14. There is no answer, so he goes around to look in the window. It appears to have been covered by a sheet. He has the woman unlock the door for him.
It won’t open, as something is blocking it. He pushes it in and finds that a towel had been wedged under the door. The window is in fact covered with blankets and duct tape, there’s a laptop on the bed plugged into the phone line and the power outlet, junk food containers litter the floor, and there are piles of clothes on the bed (folded) and in the corner (crumpled). There is nobody in the room, but there is a faint unpleasant odor. The bathroom door is closed. HAROLD opens it.
[Meta-game moment:
Tony: I don’t want to turn on the lights. There’s gonna be a dead body in there!
Eric: What would an FBI agent do? He’d do his job and turn on the lights.
Tony: But I’m gonna lose sanity points if I do. Okay, fine… I TURN ON THE LIGHTS!]
There is a dead body, but it’s not so bad. The body is of a man about in his mid-thirties, wearing a t-shirt that says “Knoxville Fantasy Con” and boxers, with black, curly hair and a beard. There are numerous slash marks on his wrists. The bathtub itself is filled with bloody water. There is no knife visible. HAROLD notices the body has a large, whitish lump on its forehead, about 3 inches in diameter. He steps out of the bathroom and examines the laptop.
He finds two files of interest. The first is a file called “Groversville Notebook” with the following contents:
Livestock Mutilations
Jeff Owens, (555-1243) 3 cows, 7/1, 7/4, 7/8
Margaret Allison (555-4628) 1 goat, 1/2
Jeremy Dark (555-9528) about 20 chickens, 7/6. Others?
Livestock Alterations
Robert Gum (no phone) 1 cow, missing udder but in good health. Purpose? Others like this—operated on and released?
7/6—spotted three more in a roadside survey, not sure who farmer was
Missing Time
Bud Aldrich (555-4290) 7/8, 1 hour; 7/15, 1 hour; 7/29, 3.5 hours
Louisa May (555-9462) 7/10, 3 hours+?
Chopper Sightings
Ameley's Hills Area (North) 8/6, 9PM; 8/6 11PM; 8/7, 10:40PM (muzzle flash and discharge)
Lights
Many—everyone's seen a few. No correlation I can find, but reports are sketchy and unreliable.
Crop Circles
Bo Larame (555-9473), 7/26; 8/3.
J. A.
P. three weeks = six months
Refuses Rx, got a room for her at the Shut Eye
Allen, Barn, Thomas, Jacobs, Cartwright & Anderson never go home
The second file is entitled “sze,t” and is an odd, disconnected stream-of-consciousness essay of some kind. HAROLD believes that it is a cipher and emails both files to his colleague (and DG Friendly) Harley O’Brian, back at the San Diego office. He calls the police to report a dead body at Merle’s Shut Eye motel.
He goes back into the bathroom to take a photo of the lump on the late Scot Adams’ head, but finds that it is not there anymore.
[Meta-game moment:
Tony: It’s in the water. I’m not reaching in there. I don’t want to look. Okay, fine. I look.]
HAROLD catches a glimpse of something moving under the bloody water. He goes back into the room and pulls the clock radio from the nightstand, plugs it in over the sink, and throws it in the tub.
Suddenly, in the moment before the lights go out, a pillar of whitish mass launches from the water and extends a pseudopod in HAROLD’s direction, smashing him violently in the face. HAROLD fires his weapon but misses, raining ceramic tile all over the bathroom. The mass retracts and submerges again, and HAROLD can hear a loud pounding on the bottom of the bathtub. He crawls back to the light of the hallway.
His teeth and jaw are shattered, and he has a sinking suspicion that some of the mass went up his nose. He dials HANNIBAL’s number but is unable to speak beyond unintelligible grunts, so he taps “S-O-S” into his phone.
“O-S-O?”, says HANNIBAL. “Isn’t that Spanish for ‘bear’? Uh-oh, HAROLD’s in trouble!” He tells Gum that they’ll be needing to borrow his truck, and they race back to the motel, arriving at the same time as Oakley’s police cruiser.
Meanwhile, in Knoxville, MALCOLM orders an epidural for Spivey to help with the pain. He arranges for the CDC to collect Bob Gum’s cow, Betsy, and bring it to Knoxville for testing. (HECTOR is skeptical that the lab can accommodate an animal that large.)
He continues analyzing the tissue throughout the day and into the night, and determines the following:
- Conventional toxins and poisons have no effect on it, as it seems to have a detoxifying effect on them;
- Strong acids or bases, as well as open flame and electricity seem to disrupt the tissue;
- It seems to draw nutrition from its host, but is able to live on its own for extended periods of time with no adverse affects;
- Addition of the colorless organic compound leucopararosaniline ([C6H4NH2]3-CH) causes the development of a vivid purple color. This fades within 2-3 minutes as the tissue metabolizes the chemical, but it could be used as a means of detecting its presence. MALCOLM finds that even trace amounts can be detected when this solution is applied with a spray bottle.
No comments:
Post a Comment