Copyright © 2001 by W. E. Lopez
By
W. E. Lopez
A sudden brightness flared inside Jan’s head and brought her to instant
wakefulness. She managed to sit up and
found she had been lying on the floor in an apparently strange motel room. Shakily, she got to her feet and knew she
was going to be in big trouble; a man’s body lying on the
floor on the other side of the bed. She
didn’t see any blood, but somehow she knew the man was dead. He was fully dressed, as was she, and she
was relieved there hadn’t been that kind of a problem.
Through
the drawn curtains she became aware of flashing red and blue lights. Jan had seen enough movies to know the
police were just outside. An amplified
electronic voice called, “Come out now, Morissey. Give yourself up and no one will get hurt!”
Morissey,
could that be the dead man’s name? Jan
had no idea of what had gone before.
The voice called again, “Let the woman go and come out with your hands
in the air!”
What
the hell is going on here, Jan asked her self?
She didn’t remember any heavy drinking… had someone slipped her a drug?
“Uh,
sheriff? Officer?” she called. “My name’s Jan Hardy! There’s a dead man lying on the floor here
but I have no idea who he is or how I came to be here!”
“Okay,
lady… we hear you. Stand back now,
we’re going to hit the door!”
Jan
backed away from the door until she was standing against the opposite
wall. There was a crash as a heavily
booted foot struck the door and it flew inward. Suddenly she found herself confronted by three armed men in SWAT
black. They quickly swarmed into the
motel room. One of the men in black
held a shotgun pointed at her and she raised her empty hands to the
ceiling. The other two checked the
bathroom and clothes closet, then the dead man.
“CLEAR!”
the man kneeling over the body called.
Three
more individuals entered the room, filling it to capacity. A man in blue carrying an EMT bag kneeled
over the dead man, accompanied by a uniformed officer. “No vitals here,” he told another man in a
dark gray suit. “I guess the party’s
over.”
“You
can lower your hands now,” the man in the suit told Jan. “I’m Detective Houser, Greenville
Police. Can you tell us what has
happened here?”
“Not really,” Jan said as she brushed a
hand through her hair. “I suddenly
awoke, lying on the floor, when I heard you calling from outside.”
Houser was distracted by a
commotion outside the motel room. “You
can’t go in there, Miss… Miss...!”
She came into the motel room
with a badge held high and announced, “Special Agent Kerry Martin, FBI. I’ll try to keep out of your way.” She stepped over to the body on the floor
just as the paramedics were rolling him onto a backboard. “Yep, that’s him,” she said softly. She looked around and her eyes settled on
Houser as the only suit in the room.
“You in charge here?” she asked.
“I like to think so, Agent
Martin. Can I see your ID once
more?” Houser checked the photo ID she
presented for his inspection. “Okay, you’re
federal. What can I do for you, ma’am?”
“Can we continue this at
your headquarters,” the woman asked.
“Mean while, I think you should put out an all points on the woman
here.”
“What? You’re kidding,” Houser said. Why put out an APB for someone already in
custody?
“I’m not laughing,” the FBI
woman said. “Humor me, please. I’ll explain when we get to your station
house.”
“Shall I cuff the witness?”
Houser asked.
“Don’t be sarcastic. She’s harmless and most likely doesn’t know
a thing. Just bring her along for her
own protection. We don’t want any of
your other men arresting her by mistake.”
The assembled police
officers, the witness, Special Agent Kerry Martin and Detective Sergeant Gene
Houser left the motel room and loaded into half a dozen squad cars and the SWAT
van in the parking lot. Ten minutes
later, Agent Martin was briefing Detective Houser behind closed doors.
“We’ve been after Morissey
for three days,” she said. “Before that
he was Sandra Beaumont in Plainville, Indiana.
Three days before that he was Tony Durand in Whitefish, Arkansas. Before that he was Susan Townsley in
Beckley, Alabama…”
“Are you sure you haven’t
been drinking or smoking something, Agent Martin? He, she, the dead man, you’ve been following them across
country?”
“I know it sounds odd,
Detective, but it’s the truth. In every
case, there has been an unexplained disappearance of a man or a woman, usually
followed by a robbery or murder or other act of violence. After 72 hours the perpetrator, the one you
just found in the motel room, suddenly dies.
Followed by another disappearance and the cycle repeats. It’s like he uses the body for three days
and then dumps it, but we always find the real individual alive and well and
not too far from the body. I think we
just caught up with the suspect as he was changing again, this time to Jan
Hardy.
“Trust me, your men will
find a duplicate of the woman in your squad room somewhere nearby, unless the
double manages to get out of town fast.”
“That’s crazy,” Houser
said. No sooner had he spoken than two
uniformed officers entered the squad room with a doppelganger of the Hardy
woman, arms cuffed behind her. “Well,
I’ll be a son of a….”
“We’ve got it now,” Agent Martin said. “I’m gonna use your phone, Detective. We’ve got several hundred agents combing the south looking for this subject. We’ll need reinforcements now. I want you to keep anyone from the press out of here, and caution all your men not to say a thing unless cleared by the Bureau.” She turned away from him and picked up the phone. Houser stood dumfounded as the scene in the squad room suddenly froze.
Officer Jensen was talking
with Sergeant Malloy who was sticking a cigarette in his mouth. His hand stopped at least six inches from
his face and stayed there, frozen.
Officer Craig was typing a
booking report with a teenaged prostitute sitting along side his desk. Suddenly his fingers froze in mid air.
Frank Savoy, the desk
sergeant was pouring a cup of coffee from the large coffee maker behind his
desk. Suddenly the brown liquid appeared
to freeze and stop pouring.
Gene Houser watched all of
this from his own frozen position of immobility. He heard Agent Martin as she began to push the buttons on the
telephone, then there was an abrupt silence.
A faint blue shimmer entered
the squad room and went directly to the doppelganger. Suddenly the woman’s arms were freed of the hand cuffs behind her
back and a second shimmering image appeared in the air where she had been
standing and her body suddenly dropped to the floor like a marionette with the
strings cut.
“We had to free you for our
own safety, Rab,” the blue shimmer telepathed to the new arrival. “Something has gone wrong and we must leave
this planet.”
“I’m aware of that,”
Zurn. “I assembled my corporeal body
from raw elements in the immediate vicinity of each Earthling and set about to
learn what I could of this world and these beings. But something was flawed.
I felt myself unable to prevent violent acts upon others of this
species. Thinking the fault may be with
only one sex, I transmuted into a member of the opposite sex the next time, but
the violence continued. Perhaps it is a
chemical in the bloodstream of this species?
Perhaps something in the atmosphere?”
“We’ll continue analysis
when we return to the ship, Rab. For
now, we will simply post this planet as dangerous until a more scientific
examination can be made.”
“I agree, Zurn. ‘Here There Be Dragyns.’ Let’s return to the ship and be away lest
this condition become permanent.”
The two shimmering images
drifted through the door of the squad room, which had closed after the last
human had entered.
“Jesus H. Christ!” Frank
Savoy shouted as the hot coffee overflowed his cup and splattered both legs of
his trousers.
“Hey! What happened?” Officer Larry Abbott
said. “I never touched her! She just dropped to the floor!”
Sergeant Malloy finally
managed to get the cigarette in his mouth and flicked a Bic while Officer Craig
looked up from his typewriter to see what the commotion was all about.
As Rab and Zurn boarded their
craft, Zurn said, “You realize there will be an inquiry, Rab.”
“Yes, I know, there always
is in these matters. But the council
acknowledges that exploring can be fraught with danger and unforeseen
happenings. We did not intentionally
set out to harm any of the humans. The
final report should not be too severe.”
“I agree, Rab. You have to expect some casualties as the
cost of exploring alien planets. Why,
it might possibly have been one of us!”
“That’s not an encouraging
thought, Zurn. Not encouraging at all!”