The Enigmatologist (20 page)

Professor Gentry scooted out from behind the table. He
waddled through the kitchen, past the tan cabinets that were coated in plastic
mimicking wood, and toward the bedroom. At the bedroom’s accordion door, he
peeked over his shoulder at John and Sheriff Masters like they were going to
steal his locker combination, and cracked the door partly, creating just enough
space for him to squeeze through, then closed it behind him. There was
shuffling behind the door. He returned from the bedroom, flipping through the
pages of a folder. Professor Gentry pulled out a piece of paper and slapped it
on the table. A series of numbers was written on it. Several letters were
circled and ‘Wow!’ was written next to them.

“Looks like a number puzzle,” John said, remembering his
unfinished puzzle in his hotel room, regretting not working on it.

“In a way, it is,” Professor Gentry said. “Every minute of
every day, we send radio waves into space. SETI, you know what SETI is, right?
They assume someone out there’s doing the same. So SETI listens for radio
waves, or, more precisely, their interns and PhD candidates do. For years they
listened, hoping to hear something. Mostly what they heard was static, white
noise, patterns like these.” He moved his hand over the page, gesturing at the
patterns of ones, twos, and threes. “But, on August 15, 1977, they heard this.”
He pointed to a group of letters circled in red ink. Next to the letters, one
word had been written that accurately summarized the astrophysicists’ sentiment
toward this find: ‘Wow!’

“This signal made everyone at SETI lose their shit.”

“Is that the technical term?” John asked.

“They’d been trying to talk to the stars for years. And
now, someone was talking back. The SETI guys did their math thing and
determined the signal was sent two hundred years ago from a star in the
constellation Sagittarius. Now, this is the part of the story that changed my
life. The very next day, August 16, 1977, Elvis Aaron Presley died.”

“Think
about it. Someone up there,” Professor Gentry said, pointing toward his popcorn
ceiling, “talked to someone down here, and the very next day Elvis died. This
isn’t a coincidence. And I’m not the only one who thinks that it isn’t.”

“In your book, you say Elvis faked his death,” John said,
repeating Mrs. Morris’s comment. He hadn’t read Professor Gentry’s book. He’d
been reading something else.

“His fans weren’t going to buy a book saying Elvis was
dead,” Professor Gentry said, shrugging his shoulders like suggesting Elvis was
still alive was a sound marketing strategy. “One thing I learned from Elvis,
you have to know your audience.”

John shook his head. Professor Gentry was no better than
The
National Enquirer
, using folklore to sell copy.

“After Elvis’s death, Colonel Hollister became obsessed,
paranoid. This was all anyone was talking about at Graceland at the time. No
one there can keep a secret. Like me, Colonel Hollister figured both Elvis’s
death and the Wow! Signal were related, but he took it one step further. He
believed both events were part of an alien invasion plot of the United States,
that they intended to cripple our psyche by eliminating cultural icons, starting
with Elvis Presley.”

“Alright,” the sheriff said, “what’s all this
gotta
do with
Leadbelly
getting
murdered?”

“For years Elvis collected data on alien activity. During
our last walk, he told me he was worried an alien contingent had learned he was
spying on them. Colonel Hollister had Elvis’s manager increase the amount and
function of his body doubles. Everyone thought the doubles were due to Elvis’s
increased drug use. That’s what they wanted everyone to think, but it really
had to do with the danger he was in.”

“Elvis told you everything about his investigation, about
aliens?” John asked. He had been holding the journal on his lap since they sat
down and John brushed his thumb along the pages’ ratted and tattered edges.

“Yup.”

“Did he tell you about this?” John set his
great-great-great-grandfather Archibald’s journal on the table, delicately slid
it to the middle. He only showed them the book, not the pictures. He left them
under his seat in the car.

“You’re kidding me.” Professor Gentry held the book,
caressed its cover. “Where did you get this?”

“It was in
Leadbelly’s
trailer.”

“I guess this is that moment where you tell me what the
hell that thing is,” Sheriff Masters said, looking over at John.

“The journal of Archibald Abernathy,” Professor Gentry
said. “I thought it was a myth.”

“What the hell does a diary
gotta
do with
Leadbelly
?”

“Not
Leadbelly
,” John said. “Me.
Archibald Abernathy’s my great-great-great-grandfather.”

“You know your great-great-great-grandfather’s name?” the
sheriff asked.

“School project.”

“This journal is the key to understanding the alien
invasion,” Professor Gentry said. “Have you read any of it?”

“Parts,” John said. He told them what he’d read so far,
Abraham Lincoln, Archibald, Louisa, the extraterrestrials, Las Vegas. “Sorry I
didn’t tell you about it earlier, Sheriff. I didn’t know what to make of it,
how everything fit together.”

“And what do you think about you being part alien and
all?” the sheriff asked.

“It’s just a piece of paper. It doesn’t mean anything.”
The connections existed, but they weren’t fastened together, unable to convince
John that he was anything more than a puzzle maker.

“The journal,” Professor Gentry said, standing and pacing
the linoleum, “Elvis told me all about it when we’d walk his chimp, Scatter.
Walking dogs is one thing, but a diaper-wearing chimp…That journal, he’d talk
about it like it was the Holy Grail or the Rosetta Stone, something that would
help them find an edge in their battle against the extraterrestrials. I never
thought I’d live to see it.”

“When we showed up, that’s how you knew my name.” John
realized it was also how Colonel Hollister knew his name.

“The Abernathy name is infamous in some circles. All
because of this journal.” Professor Gentry jabbed his finger at the journal before
turning and continuing his circuit. “Archibald Abernathy regularly sent copies
of his entries to the War Department like President Lincoln asked, but after a
while, he just stopped sending them. Your great-great-great-grandfather kept
really detailed journals, so it was always assumed he continued chronicling his
life. President Roosevelt, not FDR, the other one, Theodore, he issued an
executive order authorizing the secret service to seize it, but Archibald’s
house burned down the day of his funeral. Everyone thought the journal was lost
in the fire.”

“The land where the house was, it’s a Party Store,” John
said. Everything Professor Gentry said contradicted what John had learned about
his family history, how the
Abernathys
migrated to
Denver looking for a new life, how Archibald’s fate became a parable for making
sure the stove was turned off, not wanting to lose the family fortune in a
fire. Although the present-day Abernathy fortune consisted of student loan
debt, late rent, and credit card bills.

“When I was in
Leadbelly’s
trailer, I saw a bunch of photos on the wall. For Los Alamos and Area 51.
Surveillance photos.” John left out the pictures of him as a kid.

“He must have somehow become aware of Elvis’s connection
to the government and was secretly investigating.”

“Maybe he read your book,” John said.

“And he discovered something he shouldn’t have, probably
the journal, and was assassinated for it, but where did he find it?”

“Wait? If Elvis read a copy of the journal…”

“He’d quote it to me while I’d scoop dog poo,” Professor
Gentry said.

“Then Colonel Hollister gave it to him.” John had read
another name in the journal, one that held immediate significance for him.
“Rosa! Archibald mentions her. It said she was just a kid then.”

“If it’s in the journal…” Professor Gentry said.

“Then Colonel Hollister believes it.”

“And your Rosa is in danger.”

On
the way back to town, John’s foot bounced against the floor mat. He kept
thinking about Rosa, what she knew, what she didn’t tell him. He thought about
seeing her again, and wondered whether she’d be happy to see him. He hoped that
she’d embrace him, let him hold her, run his fingers along the narrow muscles
in her lower back. He doubted that would happen. She’d probably be awkward and
uncomfortable, subtly hinting that he should leave. Still, he needed to see
her.

He read an entry near the journal’s end. Professor Gentry
stuck his head between the front seats, trying to read over John’s shoulder,
but John ignored him.

July 23, 1867

After
years of trying to conceive, Louisa and I finally succeeded. Fortunately,
several of her relatives had journeyed from New Mexico to help with the
delivery. I say fortunately because the birthing was so unusual that a normal
doctor would have been hard pressed to continue after the first child was born.

Two
days ago, Louisa gave birth to six children, two boys and four girls, in
succession.

After
the delivery, I walked over to a chair and collapsed. The experience exhausted
me. I could only imagine what Louisa went through. From the chair, I looked
around the room at Louisa’s mother and aunts. They shared similar features, the
shape of the nose and jaw line in particular. I thought they shared these
similarities because they had the same parents, but looking at them I realized
it was because they were like my children, born mere minutes apart.

Louisa’s mother and aunts decided it would be
best if they took five of the children with them to New Mexico. Louisa and I
agreed and kept the oldest boy. We named him Dominic Oscar Abernathy and swore
never to tell him about his siblings.

“Learning anything useful?” Professor Gentry asked,
leaning over John’s shoulder.

“It’s just a book,” John said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Then how come you keep reading it?”

September 3, 1901

I
cough more often than I care to admit. The nurse comes running when she hears
me caught in a fit. My body becomes spastic and uncontrollable, but the
soothing presence of the young woman helps. She reminds me of my beautiful
Louisa. I miss her. She still visits me in my dreams, but I am becoming senile
and I think it hurts her to see my mind deteriorate. She left twenty years ago.
It was a mutual decision based on the need to protect our son. I knew it would
end soon enough when I started to show my age and she remained as beautiful as
the day we met. I’ll never forget that warm, sunny day. On my fiftieth
birthday, we ventured into the mountains for a weekend retreat and I came back
alone. I told everyone that there had been an accident, but Louisa turned into
an eagle and flew south to her family and our other children. I often wonder
what of Louisa is in Dominic. He has never shown any sign of the abilities she
possesses, but that doesn’t mean they are not there, lying dormant.

Sheriff
Masters’s
siren could be
heard in the plaza as they turned off the highway, a faint chirping that grew
louder with each block, until the two-toned alarm filled the square, forcing
cars to pull to the side of the road and pedestrians to run onto sidewalks.

The plaza looked normal, with the exception of the people
staring at them, whispering to each other. John searched the crowd for Colonel
Hollister or his men. He sighed and relaxed in his seat, not seeing anyone
looking like they worked for the Air Force, the clean shaven faces, the crew
cuts, the heavy artillery. They might have been through already, searched the
plaza, or they were still cleaning up
Leadbelly’s
fire, but they weren’t there now, and John hoped that meant Rosa was safe.

The sheriff parked in front of Rosa’s
Restaurante
,
leaving the car in the middle of the street. John sprinted to the restaurant’s
glass door.

“Where’s Rosa?” he asked, surprised that he wasn’t out of
breath. The high school girl who worked last night was back, doing the lunch
shift.

“She’s not here.”

“Well, where is she?” John asked. She glanced at the
sheriff.

“It’s okay, darling,” the sheriff said. “No one’s in
trouble. We just need to know where Rosa is.”

“I don’t know. She called in saying she was taking a
vacation, that she’d be gone for a while.”

“How long?” John asked.

“I don’t know, she didn’t say.”

“No, how long ago did she call?” John asked, grabbing her
arm.

“Sometime this morning, before we opened,” she said,
taking a step backward, clutching the menus in front of her chest.

“What about Jose?” Sheriff Masters asked. He put his hand
on John’s shoulder and John stepped back, bumping into a chair, looking at the
scuff marks on his shoes.

“He’s not here either. He called in saying he was taking a
vacation, too.”

“Has anyone been to her house, checked on them or
anything?” John asked.

“Yeah, Jed, the line cook, lives with Jose. He said he
took them to the bus station this morning. Uh, he shouldn’t be back there.”

While they were talking, Professor Gentry had slinked into
the kitchen. He held a lid in his hand, inhaling the smoke from a steaming pot as
it lingered above the stove.

“Professor!” John yelled. “Get out here! We
gotta
get to the bus station!”

He ambled out of the kitchen eating chips from a small,
paper bag.

“Really?”

“John, I don’t get into town that often.”

“That’s obvious.”

The bus station was a blue art deco building on the corner
of New Mexico Avenue and West National Avenue, a few blocks from the Plaza. The
building’s edges were rounded and a neon Greyhound sign extended above the
entrance. White wings stretched from the sides of the building, shading
travelers who waited for the two buses that could dock there and currently one
idled. It reminded John of an image from his Survey of Great Artistic Movements
Expressed as Public Transportation Buildings textbook. The sheriff trotted to
the counter, asked if Rosa and Jose had bought bus tickets. The attendant told
them they boarded the bus for Albuquerque at 9:30 a.m., twenty minutes after
she’d left the motel.

“Has anyone else been by asking about them?” John asked,
through the hole in the glass partition that separated them from the attendant.

“You’re the only ones,” the attendant said.

“She’s probably fine,” the sheriff said to John as they
walked through double glass doors and into the parking lot. The hiss of
hydraulics. “They were halfway to Albuquerque when we were at
Leadbelly’s
this morning.”

“Albuquerque,” John said, looking south. A Greyhound left
the station and headed toward the highway.

“Tell you what, the sheriff in Albuquerque’s a buddy a
mine. I’ll give him a call, see if one a his boys can run down to the bus
station, see if Rosa made it.”

“Thanks, Sheriff, I appreciate that.”

The sun reflected off the exiting bus’s windows. It was an
intangible, bright ball, existing only in reflected image. But it was real
enough to blind.

“
Goddamnit
,” John said,
shielding his eyes. “If Rosa was worried about something, why didn’t she talk
to me?”

“Maybe she was protecting you.”

That morning, when she’d said goodbye, she was distant,
pushing John away. But the way she kissed him, the longing, she seemed torn.

“That hadn’t occurred to me.”

They heard muffled departure times announced and turned as
Professor Gentry ducked into the bus station. He loitered by the entrance, then
sprinted to the bus station’s diner and packed his jacket pockets with napkins
and ketchup packets.

“You should take Professor Gentry to your station,” John
said, “show him the jail cell that guy was in last night.”

“Ha, I would, but I don’t want him bothering the rummies
in the drunk tank. I’ll get Jimmy to take him home.”

“What are you thinking?” John asked.

“I’m thinking this is
gonna
be
another one a them unsolved cases.” A fast food wrapper drifted across the
empty bus lot. It brushed the sheriff’s boot. He leaned over to pick it up, but
a gust of wind blew it underneath a Honda Civic.

“I don’t know. Someone once told me it’s not over.”

“You know, I try to do my job best I can, but I just ain’t
equipped to handle people like Hollister.”

“I know the feeling,” John said.

“So, how much longer you
gonna
be in town?”

“Not sure. I got the motel room another night. Figure I’ll
leave in the morning.”

“
Wanna
ride to your car?” the
sheriff asked, thumbing to his squad car parked in the handicapped space.

“I think I’ll walk. It’s not that far.”

“All right, then. I’ll pick you up for dinner?”

“Sounds good,” John said. He wouldn’t be at the motel.
Rosa had absconded to Albuquerque, and John needed to find her, protect her. As
soon he was packed, he’d leave, dropping a note for the sheriff at the front
desk. It would be an impersonal goodbye, a big city goodbye. But it would have
to do.

He shook Sheriff
Masters’s
hand
and walked down the street to the plaza. Halfway down the block, John heard the
sheriff yelling and reeled around, and laughed as the sheriff tried to shove
Professor Gentry into the car. The professor was like a dog that had escaped
from its yard, running everywhere but home.