Callisto (34 page)

Then there's this big eclipse that happened and everything went dark very fast.

N
ow, you will have read in the newspapers about those people that wake up in bed and there has gotten to be some aliens in the room all standing around looking strange and communicating telepathically, this has been on TV also. That's how I knew something very unusual had happened to me, drugs or something to make me think I'm surrounded by aliens that are giving me commands I don't understand. Maybe Donnie D spiked my drink, he's a drug dealer, only we did not have any drinks. And this is not my room anyway, Dean's room, that is, and this is not my bed. One of the tall thin aliens was disguised like a nurse, all in white and blue, and another one has got a special probe device around his neck to insert the locator bug up my nose so they can always find me even if I run to the ends of the earth, only it looks like a regular stethoscope so I don't get alarmed and fight back when the bug goes in.

“Can you hear me?” he says.

He almost looked human, but you can always tell if it's an alien by the way the edges of the face have got makeup to hide where the mask ends, the mask that hides the lizard face underneath, so I was not going to be fooled into talking when I'm not ready for alien interrogation and a nasal implant. Or else this is still a dream I'm having, only now it hurts. My hand hurts and my head hurts and my shoulder, also one knee. I have got bandages around my head and my right hand which is kind of throbbing.

“Mr Deefus, can you hear me?”

“Uh...”

“Can you tell me how many fingers I'm holding up?”

He gave himself away there because he forgot to hide those extra alien fingers for a total of seven. These aliens are not so clever as you might think, only technogistically more advanced than we are just yet. But I was ready now to fool him into thinking I don't know what's going on. This is a white room inside the mother ship for sure.

“Five . . .” I croaked, and he looked pleased.

“Good. Do you know what happened to you?”

“I saw the moon . . .”

That wasn't the right answer. He leaned in closer till his humanoid mask was long as a cartoon face. “There was an explosion,” he says. “The house was destroyed. You're very lucky to be alive.”

So now I'm thinking did the propane tank explode or what? And maybe these people are not aliens, just people, hospital people. In which case something real has happened, not a dream after all. That propane tank had not looked like
it was in good shape but the propane delivery company is supposed to tell you if it needs fixing, so obviously Dean had ignored the warning is what I thought.

“A bomb,” says the doctor, which I can see now he's a real doctor and the nurse is a real nurse, and those two over there in the suits watching me close look like cops. I had heard that word before – bomb – but couldn't think what one of those was. It sounded like something round and full – bommmmmm – kind of like a propane tank, but that wasn't it.

“A truck bomb,” he says.

I thought about trucks and come up with Dean's truck, the old Dodge with the lawnmowers in back of it, but it wasn't in such bad shape you could call it a bomb, not even a junker like my Monte Carlo, so there is still confusion in my mind about this.

“Can we talk to him?” asks one of the suits.

The doctor looked into my eyes like he's trying to make up his mind. He has got a small mole on his cheek. “Are you able to talk for a little while, Mr Deefus?”

“Uhuh . . .”

The two cops come closer and the doctor and nurse slid away out of sight with the doc saying over his shoulder, “Not for too long.”

Then they're hovering close beside the bed, both of them. “How are you today, Mr Deefus?” says the one without the glasses. “Agent Kraus and Agent Deedle, do you remember us from last week?” So they aren't cops, they're FBI, now I remember.

“Uhuh.”

They dragged over some plastic chairs and sat down.

“Are you in much pain, Mr Deefus?”

“Uhuh.”

“Well, we'll go as fast as we can so you don't get inconvenienced. There's some questions need answering about this incident. We've been told the truck was stolen, is that right?”

“Uhuh, yesterday.”

The agents exchanged a look, then Deedle says, “You mean the day before yesterday, I think. This is Wednesday now.”

“Wednesday...”

“You had a blow to the head, Odell. Can we call you Odell?”

“Uhuh.”

“And it was returned to you late Monday night?”

“They left it in the driveway.”

“They. Do you know who?”

“Chief Webb, I think, but he was only fooling around. He brung it back. Was it the propane tank exploded?”

“No, it was the truck. We found one of the doors a half-mile away with
Dean Lowry Lawnmowing
on it. It was a truck bomb, Odell.”

“Truck bomb . . .”

“What time did they bring it back?”

“I . . . don't know.” I didn't want to tell them about being out with Donnie and Lorraine collecting cash for her drug package. “I found it in the driveway ... it was after ten o' clock.”

“And what happened then?”

“I ...went back inside to get the keys and drive it up to the house.”

“And did you do that?”

“No, I...I lost my cell phone inside the truck and I rung the number from the house to make it ring so I can find it . . .”

Kraus nodded like this is something he can use. “Was the phone in the truck when it was stolen, Odell?”

“Uhuh. I thought maybe it's still in there, the floor's kind of messy.”

“So you called your own cell and the truck exploded. That's how it's done nowadays, using a phone call to activate the detonator. What happened then?”

“I don't know. I saw the fridge and the rocker sailing past me like it's a dream . . .”

“Now, think hard, Odell. Could this be the work of Dean Lowry?”

“Dean? No, he's ... he wouldn't blow up his own truck.”

“It isn't about the truck, it's about what was done to the truck. They must have crammed every body panel in the vehicle with high explosive. That was one hell of a bang out there, Odell. You can't remember that part?”

“No, it was real quiet, so I thought I'm dreaming. Is the house wrecked?”

“Completely demolished. It's a miracle you're still alive and with so few injuries. The emergency team found you way over in back of the house near some cottonwoods. Those trees had every leaf stripped off them, and they had the house in between the bomb and them, so that gives you some indication of how powerful this blast was. We're still doing the analysis but it looks like this was intended to take out a city block, more or less.”

Deedle says, “Why do you think it was Chief Webb?”

“Oh ... he just doesn't like me, I guess.”

“That's an extreme reaction to not liking someone, turning their truck into a bomb. Why doesn't he like you?”

“He...I made a mistake about Saturday and Sunday, if I met Dean this day or that day, and it's like he thinks I'm lying. I told him later I got drunk with Dean so I got that part wrong.”

“We remember you telling us about that, Odell. It still seems a bit of a stretch to think the Chief of Police would steal someone's truck and jam it full of explosives just because of something like you described, don't you think? There'd have to be a better reason that that.”

“Maybe . . .” was all I could say. To myself I'm thinking it most likely wasn't Andy Webb after all, only who
was
it? Who could hate my guts so much they wanted to blow me into a million pieces? This was not making any kind of sense. And I bet Lorraine was mad as hell about the house that she was just about to inherit, but most likely Aunt Bree kept up those insurance payments. But would the policy include terrorist bomb destruction? There are some policies that don't include flood damage and unless you ask special for it you don't get it, and if you get flooded out, tough tit, you weren't covered for that, so was Bree covered for bomb destruction? I would need to ask Lorraine about this.

“Has she been in to see me?”

“Who's that, Odell?”

“Lorraine.”

“No,” says Deedle. “You're restricted.”

“Huh?”

“Nobody gets to see you except us. She's been told you're okay.”

“Don't worry about that, Odell,” says Kraus. “The important thing is to figure out who took the truck and converted
it into a bomb. We suspect there was a team behind it. Rigging a truck to explode on that scale doesn't get done like having the oil changed. We think three or four guys arranged this in the ten to twelve hours the truck was missing.”

“The second big question, “ says Deedle, “is whether you were the intended target. Have you got enemies, Odell?”

“No.”

“Nobody at all? Think back. Has there been anyone you got into an argument with lately?”

“Only Chief Webb.”

“Forget Webb, we know he's not a player in this. Think some more.”

“Okay,” I said, and I did, I did think some more till it hurt, but nothing come of it.

“Did you and Dean have an argument?”

“No, we got along great. I only knew him a couple days, then he went away. There wasn't time to be getting into arguments. He didn't do this.”

“But maybe a terrorist cell he's involved with did,” says Kraus, with this look on his face that says he thinks I'm hiding something.

“Well, I wouldn't know about that. I never met a terrorist.”

“They look like you and me, Odell. Maybe you met a terrorist and didn't see that he's a terrorist. That's no crime. They make themselves invisible in society, that's how they do the terrible things they do without anybody suspecting the plans they're making for mass destruction and terror.”

“Well, then, maybe I did, but I wouldn't know which one it was.”

They looked at me like they're disappointed somehow, but
there's nothing I can tell them about this bomb that I know because I don't know anything. I don't
know
anything and I didn't
do
anything.

“I want to see Lorraine.”

“Would that revive your memory, seeing her?”

“Maybe.”

“You and her an item, Odell?”

“She's my fiancée . . .pretty soon.”

“Is that right?” Deedle looked over at Kraus. “The sister of a terrorist and the victim of a terrorist bomb are going out together. That sounds like a movie plot.”

“Maybe you should get an agent,” says Kraus, smiling a little.

“You guys are agents,” I said. They looked at me a long while, then at each other, then Kraus says, “We know about the drugs, Odell.”

“Drugs?”

“Your girlfriend's phone has been bugged this last week, just in case her brother called. We know where you and her and Donald Hubert Youngman, aka Donnie Darko, went Monday evening.”

“Huh?”

Deedle reached in his pocket and brung out a picture he handed to me, and there we are together, me and Lorraine and Donnie. “That was taken at the Fifteenth Street ATM. Those pinhole cameras keep getting better and better.”

“Nice tone,” says Kraus. “Nice clarity. That's evidence of intent to parlay money into drugs, Odell, and there you are, right in the middle.”

“Mmmm. . .”

“We know about Lorraine's sideline in delivery of narcotics
to the state pen and her relationship with the guy on the inside that passes it on.”

“Relationship?”

“That'd be a sexual relationship,” says Deedle.

“It starts with two people working in the same place,” says Kraus, “and develops over coffee in the cafeteria to a mutual interest in making untaxed money on the side, and before you know it the whole enterprise ends up getting those concerned ten to fifteen. That's a fairly young woman there, Odell. You wouldn't see each other for a long time.”

“Relationship with who?”

“Mean to say you didn't know about that, Odell? She's your fiancée, after all. She didn't tell you about the guy she's been humping, her boss?”

“Cole?”

“That's the guy. He'll get a longer term than her, being her superior. You don't look good, Odell.”

“I didn't do anything . . .”

“Right, you're an innocent bystander. Got your picture right here, standing by innocently while your girl the mule takes out more cash for the new inflated price to pay her supplier. It looks bad, Odell. At the very least I'd say this leaves you wide open for a charge of conspiracy, trafficking, aiding and abetting, take your pick.”

“Three to five if the judge doesn't like you,” says Deedle. “Maybe you can all wave to each other through the bars.”