PANIC (17 page)

“I just don’t get it.”

She set two clean plates down and forks next to them. The platter in front of them steamed with hot breakfast food; golden brown slices of toast, a pale yellow cloud of quivering eggs, bacon fried until it turned a cured, translucent red. She served him, even giving him a little bacon for not bugging or hurrying her.

“I think you’d better get this while it’s still hot,” she said, pulling up her chair next to his at the table. She smiled at him and he offered a weak pseudo smile in return, ineffectively masking his consternation. Eggs sit on the edge of his fork as though he has no appetite.

He wants to ask her if she’s heard anything about last night, just a few towns over. She works a graveyard shift just like he does, except over at the intake at the county hospital.

“Come on, babe. What’s going on with you this morning?”

He looks at her, gravely, to show her he’s serious about what he wants to ask.

“Sandra, were there any visits to emergency from New Hope?”

He asks as if her answer will explain what’s wrong with him.

“Not that I’m aware of. It was a slow night, anyway.”

“Are you positive? No one with unusual or inexplicable injuries?”

“Positive. Well, there was a man who had a seizure from eating oysters. Isn’t that horrible?”

“Yes, but I’m thinking more along the lines of bad falls, pedestrian car accidents, stuff like that.’

She eyed him sideways, folding a strip of bacon into her mouth. Her lips puckered when she chewed, prim and careful not to open her mouth with food in it.

“What’s this about? You’re all, I dunno.”

“Agitated, is the word.”

“Tight is more what I was thinking.”

He felt her knee under the table and gave her a look of reassurance.

“It’s nothing really. Just this stupid case we picked up last night. Can’t get my arms around it.”

She finished chewing.

“Whatever it is, Will, it’s got you pretty badly thrown off. Start at the beginning, just tell me about it.”

He leaned back in his chair again, staring down into the china with its sunburst of eggs bracketed by triangles of toast.

“I’m looking at this plate and I can identify everything on it. You made eggs and scrambled them. They’re a little runny. The toast looks like it’s wheat and you spread butter on them hot from the toaster. I can tell because that’s what it looks like. I’m familiar with it.”

She nodded, trying to comprehend.

“I don’t exactly follow.”

“What I’m saying is, in order to process something new or something you’ve never seen before, you have to have some context for it to build from.”

“You know, Doctor Ramesh says stuff like that to me all the time. Like being a doctor is just guesswork with a large base of information.”

“That’s more or less the case for me. That’s precisely the problem I’m having.”

Her plate was half gone; she found herself digging in as he spoke. He didn’t touch his, instead staring at it like the contents of a microscope slide.

“When you see something you’ve never seen before, where do you even start? Not everything can be narrowed down using surface level observations.”

Her fork scraped the plate.

“You sound worried about something. Like maybe you’re in danger.”

“Not me, exactly.”

“Then who?”

“When something happens and you have no explanation for it, people start talking about bad luck.”

A worried expression creases her face in empathy. Mild revulsion. Wilson’s not a superstitious man at all, that much she’s sure of.

“Will, baby. Nothing you’re saying is making sense.”

“I know, and it scares the hell out of me, too.”

“Well, eat something.”

“Don’t be glib.”

“I’m not, I just want you to busy yourself. You’re too up in your own head today.”

“Nothing’s...I dunno. Shaking it loose.”

“Not with that attitude, Will.”

He sighs in resignation and feels her hand on top of his under the table. He doesn’t like that concerned look, thinking if he tells her what’s really going on, she’ll definitely think he’s nuts.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“I know, babe. Just take the day off.”

“You’re right, you’re right,” he says, grabbing his coat off the back of his chair. Even on his day off he dresses in a dress shirt and tie with dark pants and immaculate shoes. This isn’t a day for a hat, but he doesn’t know the meaning of the word casual.

“I think I just need to go for a walk, clear my head.”

“Wanna walk with me?”

“Nah, you’ve got that whole regimen. Don’t let an old man slow you up.”

He watches her take his plate and scrape the uneaten food into the kitchen bin, then drop both plates in the dishwasher. She leans her butt against the counter, drying off her hands with a bar towel.

“Uch. What a waste,” she mumbles, sucking her teeth.

“Sorry. Really. I’m out of here. Have a good run, honey.”

“Give me a kiss, ok?”

He obliges and she takes his scruffy face in her hands. She tastes like breakfast. Every time, he feels lucky.

Outside, he’s up the block from his townhouse when he finds the card in his coat pocket with the name.

––––––––

P
ETER J. “P.J.” MERRIAM

FORENSIC PHOTOGRAPHER

––––––––

T
hen the county, state, as well as home, mobile and desk numbers. After exactly twelve rings, the message starts and he waits for the beep.

“Hi, P.J. This is William Wilson, we spoke briefly last night. I apologize for the earliness of this call, but I need you to meet me somewhere as soon as you—”

A bleary voice cut in.

“Hello?”

“Good morning. This P.J.?”

“The one and only.”

“It’s Will. Sorry if I got you out of bed.”

“It’s fine, I’m up.”

Wilson paused.

“You know Celia’s in New Hope?”

“The cafe?”

“Yeah. Meet me there in thirty.”

He takes the bus, like an old man. The driver looks drowsy enough to fall asleep, but the bus is about half full, even at this early hour. These are the morning people: nannies, day workers, high school students, indigents. Retired men like himself taking the bus downtown to people watch and overpay for coffee.

There’s a dreadful calm among these people, a somnolence that pervades the ride.

Wilson holds a bus schedule in his open hand, just to keep busy. It has a complicated timetable completely diagramming the entire route and a map outlining the circuitous route. Wilson squints at it until he notices it’s shaped like a gem, the kind you set into a ring.

The gem has five points.

Before long, the bus squeals to a stop at the end of a block that opens up into a square where Wilson gets off, where the buildings outlining a tree-shaded park are mixed use storefronts. Above the shops are are white walled loft condominiums with patios for wealthy young yuppies. The park has a gate, mock wrought iron with mock whale oil lampposts lining a mock-cobbled path. The materials are expensive but sandblasted and treated with chemicals to make them look authentic. It’s a fake old town for affluent young people craving a history that may not have ever happened.

At the corner is the cafe, the holdout from the old town. He’s been coming ever since he’s retired, even before this neighborhood became hip.

He pushes the door and it swings open with a pleasant ringing of bells.

“Hey, Wilson,” comes a boyish voice from behind the counter, a plain girl with tattoos covering her arms and a bull’s nose ring piercing.

“Good morning, Mia,” he says, dropping his coat on his regular booth. There’s a groove in the cushion that seems made for him to sit in. “Any calls while I was out?”

Her wiry arms bulge with veins as she wrenches portafilters in place, hot from the steam cleaner.

“Very funny. How’s your wife doing?”

“Marathon training.”

She doesn’t usually do this for customers, but she’s soft on Wilson, so she comes around the counter and serves him a double in a plain white demitasse with a saucer. He has the laptop out, the one his wife gave him as a retirement present; the one she immediately regretted giving to him when she learned he only used it for work.

She worried sometimes about his choice in hobbies, nothing like fishing, golf or poker nights.  At times, he would pore over entire books about chess problems in preparation for weeks-long games he’d play with a few acquaintances down at the library in the quiet room.

He downs the shot of espresso and it shoots down his throat, hot and strong. Almost immediately, he feels the muscles in his hand tighten. He holds his hands over the keyboard like a puppeteer, staring down and hammering the keys with his index finger as if operating a Teletype. Even after thirty years of typewriters, word processors and computer keyboards, he still hasn’t gotten the feel for the layout, almost preferring to jab the keys until they spat out words.

“giant fingerprint”

He types this in the search bar, then hits the Enter key. It doesn’t look less stupid typed out. Every result is for some kind of novelty item or nonsense theories about ancient aliens.

“giant fingerprint + phenomenon”

Dunes on Mars. A staged crop circle photo. Everything looks like some kind of art project or a happy accident, not at all like whatever it was he saw last night. This thing burrowed its way into his brain, dug a pit in his stomach. It didn’t look like a fingerprint, the more he thought about it. He couldn’t quite process it.

He slouched in the booth and chewed his thumbnail.

“Mia?”

It took her a minute, over the loud jets of steam she was using to clean out the machines.

“You called me?”

She leaned over the marble bar counter to acknowledge him.

“Yeah. Listen, did you hear or read anything about last night?”

“Had a gig last night so I totally just passed out on the couch when I got in.”

“Hm.”

She came around the counter again, flopping a bar rag over her shoulder. Her short hair was bound up with a bandana tied in the front. Cute in a feisty, tomboyish way. Her voice was husky in an affected way, like she was mimicking a teenage boy trying to sound older.

“Why, what’s up?”

She could see it in his face that he was near desperate, trying to get an affirmative answer to a probing question.

“Nothing like a house blowing up, anything like that?”

“No way, man. Though I gotta admit, I don’t really watch the news.”

His fingers were clasped over his chest and his chin sunk down, eyeing her, then the screen. He hadn’t imagined it. He didn’t need to prove it, yet everyone had an alibi for not seeing it or hearing about it. It would be the most ordinary reaction if it didn’t happen only a couple miles away.

“Hm,” he grunted, a familiar and noncommittal sound. His thumbs are twiddling, jerked to life by the concentrated boost of the espresso shot.

The door jangles again and in walks a tall guy with hair down to his ears. It’s parted in the middle and dirty blonde, falling over the front of his face and partially obscuring his thin reading glasses. He’s carrying a black bag, slung over his shoulder.

“Tall chai,” he says to Mia, and she nods, smiling.

“You got it.”

He shuffles into the booth, opposite the man staring at a laptop. Wilson doesn’t recognize him until he smooths his hair back with both hands. His eyes are pink around the rim and he blinks slowly.

“Will, right?” he says, putting out his hand.

“Most people call me Wilson.” Wilson takes the man’s hand and gives it a grip. “Nice seeing you again.”

“Likewise.”

“I’m sure you know why I asked you to come here.”

P.J. just stares with ringed eyes, thinking the older man has an answer. He rolls up the sleeves on his flannel shirt and rests his forearms on the table, leaning over to speak. The cafe is empty aside from the girl at the counter and the two men in the booth but P.J. speaks as though the room has hidden microphones.

“I couldn’t get a minute of sleep last night. Usually I’m out right after the re-run of SVU, but every time I closed my eyes, I could just see it. Taunting me.”

“I can’t say the same exactly but it’s sure stuck with me,” Wilson offers in his version of sympathy.

“Has anyone else spoken to you about it?”

“That’s the thing. You and I seem to be the only ones.”

“That’s impossible. There were twenty-five, thirty people on the scene last night. They had to have notified the couple that owned the places. There were a few bystanders, had to be some reporters, too.”

“There’s nothing on the news or in the papers.”

A feeling like hopelessness mounted inside of P.J., like he were back in the dream, impotently pumping his legs to try and get away from the giant press looming over him. Wherever he ran, it hung there just above him, ready to stamp down and erase him from existence. Even fainter in the grey sky was something clutching the press.

“So. What could this thing possibly be?”

“I have some ideas. What was the first thing that came to mind as a possibility?”

P.J. gave a sheepish look.

“Alright, well. First thing? Crop circles. Some guys come in the night and use a simple pivot, rope and some boards to make elaborate patterns in a cornfield.”

“Wouldn’t explain why the house was destroyed.”

“Course not. I just thought it was...deliberate. Planned in some way.”

“I agree, but someone would have to notice that kind of thing. It would take hours and hours to make that pattern. At any rate, I don’t think it’s some kind of destructive performance art.”

Wilson sat up in the booth again, stimulated by the conversation. “What else you got?”

“Maybe it’s Earth Liberation Front or something. Destroy the suburbs, damn man for leaving his mark on the Earth, something like that?”

“That’s cute but that’s way too sophisticated for them. From my understanding, they’re more into arson.”

“Maybe it came from underground, like...a partial cave-in. Part of the county is sitting on an aquifer. You can bulldoze all you want, everywhere you build houses, you’re building on natural features.”