Dark Target (10 page)

“And her name is?”

“Cheryl Escavedo,” DeLuca said. “Sergeant Cheryl Escavedo. Arizona Army National Guard.”

Brother Antonionus tapped a few keys on his keyboard, reading from his monitor.

“She called here… February seventeenth. Would that make sense?”

She’d disappeared on the nineteenth.

“Does it say there what she might have called about?” DeLuca asked.

“Nnnnnnope,” Antonionus said, manipulating his mouse until he was satisfied with his answer.

“And you called her back when?”

“Well,” he said, clicking again, “it’s on my to-do list for four days ago, but I’m not sure when I got around to it. What’s
today? Saturday? I think I called her back Thursday. I could check my phone records.”

“That’s all right,” he said. “We could check them, too, if we needed to. I’m just mainly interested in why she might have
been calling you.”

“Is she in some sort of trouble?” Antonionus asked. “You have a very disturbed aura right now.”

“We’re not sure,” DeLuca said. “We’d like to talk to her before we reach any conclusions. And I apologize for my aura.”

“We get a lot of calls, Detective. Is it Detective? We get calls from people all over the world, every day, inquiring about
either our products or the Metamorphosis System. I’d say at least once a week someone shows up on our doorstep, seeking one
thing or another.”

“What do you do with them,” DeLuca asked. “The people who show up?”

“Well, we try to accommodate them, if we can,” Antonionus said. “We don’t want anyone going away disappointed. Some seekers
are ready and others need more preparation, so we give them a program kit to take home, and sometimes we refer them to one
of our satellite campuses. That probably sounds like a pun, doesn’t it? I wish I’d thought of it. How is your marriage, Detective?
My sense is that your wife wishes you’d change something. Your line of work, I think. Forgive me for intruding but when I
hear things whispering in my ear, it’s hard to ignore them.”

“I appreciate your concern,” DeLuca said. “Can you think of any reason why Sergeant Escavedo might have called you on the
seventeenth? Anything going on, on or around that date?”

“Not around here,” Antonionus said. “We had an Ascension ceremony on the nineteenth, but that was in Arizona.”

“Whereabouts?” DeLuca asked.

“A place called Spirit Mountain,” Antonionus said. “I’d received instructions that a ship would be using a meteor shower that
night to conceal a landing. Unfortunately, in my current condition, I’m a bit aphasic at times. I think I understand things,
but I don’t.”

“Did a ship in fact come that night?” DeLuca asked. He wasn’t really interested in the answer, except that Antonionus had
been in proximity to the disappearance, and that meant he might have seen something. It was also more than a coincidence,
and that meant something, too. Somewhere in the bullshit, there could be information DeLuca could use.

“One did, but it wasn’t Rigelian,” Antonionus said, rather matter-of-factly, as if ships arrived all the time.

“What was it?”

“I’m not sure,” Antonionus said. “They signed a trade alliance with a collective from the Sega quadrant but I wasn’t aware
that it had gone into effect yet. My understanding was that they’d be stopping for hydrogen only. Do you want me to find out
what kind of ship it was?”

“That won’t be necessary,” DeLuca said. “I’m sure my friends at CMAF can tell me that.”

Antonionus snickered.

“Oh, yes, I’m sure they can,” he said. “They’ll be very helpful.”

“How did you know where the Ascension was going to take place?” DeLuca asked.

“How?” Antonionus said. “How do monarch butterflies know which way is Mexico? Or more to the point, how do they know they
know? I’m not trying to be deliberately elusive, Detective. There are simply things I know, but I have a harder time saying
how I know them. The body you see is a shell I’ve been forced to wear. The angel inside of me is my true self, from somewhere
quite different from this world. Yet the shell is what I have to work with here, to speak and to understand. A big part of
its job is to interpret the wisdom of its truer self. We all have angels inside of us, Detective, yourself included. In which
sense, describing freeing our angels as the next condition is a bit of a misnomer, because they are already with us. The next
expression might be a better term, but, you know, too late now.”

“I guess what I’m really wondering is, how would Cheryl Escavedo have known about your Ascension?” DeLuca said. “We found
her Jeep at the base of Spirit Mountain, so it makes me wonder if she was coming to join you, for whatever reason.”

“Some people are drawn to them,” Antonionus said. “People wander in all the time simply because they’ve been called. Other
people might have seen our ads in the popular magazines. Ascensions are also posted on our Website. Whenever possible. I usually
know months in advance, but not always. One time I recall I was given about fifteen minutes’ notice, but fortunately, we were
nearby. You say you found her Jeep—I take it then that you’re unable to account for Sergeant Escavedo’s whereabouts?”

“That’s right,” DeLuca said.

“Have you taken into account the possibility that she was taken?” Antonionus asked. “I suppose for someone like you, this
is still beyond the realm of possibility, but there was a ship that night. They all have the technology. Probably a third
of the people here today have been abducted and most of the others know someone who was. It’s all been well documented and
supported by authorities as well respected as Harvard psychology professor Hilton Jaynes. I don’t expect to change your mind
here and now, Detective, but if you’re looking for someone who went missing at Spirit Mountain that night, it is the most
logical explanation. Don’t they say the explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is the one most likely to be true?”

“That is what they say,” DeLuca said. “But it’s really more a question of quality than quantity. I’d rather have an explanation
with ten small reasonable assumptions than one big dubious one.”

“Dubious is one of the nicer things I’ve been called,” Antonionus said, smiling again. What was with all the smiling? “Do
you really think, with over a hundred thousand other planets in the cosmos, just like earth, just as inhabitable, that we’re
alone in the universe?”

“Do you really think I’m going to believe a grown man who’s dressed like a cross between Santa’s helper and Pee-wee Herman
didn’t just pull that number out of his ass?” DeLuca wanted to say, but he held his tongue.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’ve found a lot of missing people over the years, and of all the reasons that they’ve
been missing, that’s never been one of them,” he said instead. “I try to be open to new ideas, but I can’t help but base my
decisions and hunches on past experience. But if you could get the name of the ship, we’ll throw it into the system and see
what happens.”

“I’d love to see how you’d do with a Good Attention program,” Antonionus said, clasping his hands together over his heart.
DeLuca was still waiting for the charisma he’d heard of to kick in, but so far, all he was seeing was the same sort of bemused
confidence he’d seen in a hundred other deluded morons, with a random meting out of benevolence that probably made his followers
feel good about themselves. “The technology allows the player to control the images on the screen with his mind. You might
think that’s dubious, too, but they’re using it in schools to help children with attention deficit disorder learn to focus.
I think you’d be absolutely off the charts. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone with such a perfect blend of convergent and
divergent thinking.”

“Where do you get your crystals, by the way?” DeLuca said. “I think I’d like to get one for my wife.”

“My advisers,” Antonionus said. “A variety of places, really. Some were gifts. This one spoke to me in the desert and asked
me to pick it up. Her up—she doesn’t like it when I call her an ‘it.’” He put his finger on it. DeLuca half-expected it to
light up.

“Do you ever buy crystals from a kid named Marvin Yutahay?” DeLuca asked. “Native American kid. Gem hunter.”

“Not to my knowledge, but then I never buy crystals, period. Others here may know about him. Would you like me to ask?”

“That’s all right,” DeLuca said.

They were interrupted by a knock on the door. God’s Miracle entered and said they were ready with their midmorning reports.
DeLuca rose to leave, laying his card down on Brother Antonionus’s table.

“Thanks for the help,” he said, “and for the kind words. Time I took my divergent thinking elsewhere.”

“Miracle will see you to your car,” Antonionus said.

“Thanks, but I can find it. Do call me if you hear from Sergeant Escavedo.”

“I will,” Antonionus said. “I promise I will.”

When he got to his car, he discovered it had been washed and waxed by a young woman in the requisite red jumpsuit who was
putting a few finishing strokes to polishing the hood. She looked at him, then glanced nervously over his shoulder to see
if someone was behind him.

“Are you a police officer?” she asked him.

“Not exactly, but something like that,” he replied.

“Can you help me find my daughter?” the woman said, panic rising in her voice. “My name is Rainbow. My daughter’s name is
Ruby. I think they have her, but I don’t know where she is. They won’t let me talk to her.”

“Who has her?” DeLuca said. “Who won’t let you talk to her?” But the woman calling herself Rainbow rushed off, fearful that
her pleas had been overheard, and disappeared into the house to make her midmorning report.

Because of Posse Comitatus laws, there were strict limitations preventing military interference in matters of civilian justice—nobody
wanted America resembling some South American banana republic where the army and the police were the same thing. At the same
time, the Patriot Act gave law enforcement and intelligence agencies more leeway these days. DeLuca had two options, regarding
the woman named Rainbow’s request. He could (and probably should) relay her plea to the local authorities and let them handle
it. They were no doubt accustomed to a whole slew of wacky statements and claims coming out of the Brethren of the Light compound.
He certainly didn’t have time to look into it personally, but he could assign someone to it if it took on any greater significance.
If two girls had disappeared at the same time, on or around the same time and place, that was certainly significant.

He had two more stops to make, first at the Military Entry Processing Station where Escavedo had worked. It was a dead end,
a nondescript beige federal building where no one had anything really helpful to contribute. Cheryl had seemed disgruntled
and unhappy in her work, DeLuca learned, but then again, everybody there seemed disgruntled and unhappy in their work. She
hadn’t made any close friends, and in fact seemed aloof and distant, as if she didn’t want to make any close friends. She
didn’t talk to anybody, and kept to herself, mostly, did her job and went home, no overtime, no self-initiated projects—it
didn’t sound like the Cheryl Escavedo DeLuca had read about in her 201 file. One coworker recalled Escavedo receiving a bouquet
of flowers on Valentine’s Day, but she didn’t tell anybody whom they were from. When DeLuca called all the local florists
in the Yellow Pages, none of them had any record of delivering flowers to the MEPS building on Valentine’s Day.

His last stop of the day was the apartment Cheryl Escavedo shared with Theresa Davidova, the ground floor of a two-story house
with a large porch in the front and a smaller one in the back. He’d hoped to listen to the message on her answering machine
and read the note Cheryl had left, the words “Tom never…” When he got there, he knocked on the front door and rang the
bell, but no one was home. When he called the number Theresa had given him, it rang and rang. He wondered why the machine
didn’t pick up. When he walked around the house, he saw that the back door was open a crack. When he opened it, he was suddenly
startled when a cat darted past him. According to the writing on the litterbox, the cat’s name was “Boo.” There was a half-empty
bowl of cereal on the table (Boo had drunk all the milk) and a box of Honey Nut Cheerios in front of it, the top open, next
to a glass of orange juice, untouched. The answering machine was gone from the kitchen counter, the telephone wire and power
source unplugged. The case of power bars on the kitchen counter was overturned and empty. A search of the rest of the house
turned up little, though there were clothes strewn on the bed as if someone had packed very quickly.

He was in the kitchen again when a red International Harvester pickup with a black camper on the back pulled into the driveway.
A young man got out, late twenties, fit-looking in jeans and work boots and an unzipped gray hooded sweatshirt over a black
T-shirt, his longish black hair swept back but unruly, his beard closely trimmed. DeLuca stepped out on the porch to meet
him.

“Who are you?” the young man asked, stopping in his tracks.

“David DeLuca, Army counterintelligence,” he replied, flashing his B’s and C’s. “Who are you?”

“Josh Truitt,” the young man said. “My girlfriend lives here. What are you doing here?”

“I’m looking for Cheryl,” DeLuca said. “She your girlfriend?”

“Theresa,” Josh Truitt said. “Is she here?”

“She’s not,” DeLuca said. “Were you expecting her?”

“We were supposed to have dinner,” Truitt said. “I called all day but she didn’t answer and the machine didn’t pick up.”

“Were you here earlier?” DeLuca asked.

“Just got here,” Truitt said.

“It looks either like she left in a hurry or she was expecting to be right back,” DeLuca said. “Her answering machine is missing.
I’m guessing she usually doesn’t take her answering machine with her when she leaves the house.”

“We were supposed to go camping,” Truitt said. “Tomorrow morning.”

“Where were you going?”