Elsewhere Page 3

  6

  Throughout the night, Jeffy dreamed of the box. The dreams were fluid, each withering into the next, with no narrative coherence. In some, he desperately searched for the package but couldn’t find it—or he found a variety of boxes that were not the one with which Ed had entrusted him. In one scene, he entered the kitchen and turned on the lights and saw the pasteboard walls of the small container bowing outward and the string taut as something strained to escape those confines, something from which issued a needful keening as chilling as any sound he’d ever heard. Later, much like Alice in Wonderland after she sipped from the bottle labeled Drink Me, Jeffy found himself very small, perhaps one inch tall, trapped inside the box; he sensed that something larger than him, something hungry and vicious, was clinging to the underside of the lid, high above, able to see him in the dark, though he could not see it . . .

  He woke before dawn and shaved, showered, dressed. When he went into the kitchen and turned on the lights, the box sat in the center of the breakfast table, precisely where he’d left it. It was not distorted, and no sound came from it.

  Jeffy didn’t find Ed threatening. He remained certain that the box contained an ordinary item that the old man thought significant only because of his delusions. How curious, therefore, that Jeffy’s subconscious should torment him with disturbing dreams—some almost nightmares—involving this innocuous package.

  The Art Deco kitchen conveyed him to a time when the world had seemed more welcoming, and his lingering uneasiness faded. A floor of large white ceramic tiles joined by small black diamond-shaped inlays. Glossy white cabinetry. Stainless-steel countertops and backsplash. A restored O’Keefe and Merritt stove with its several compartments. A replica of a 1930s Coldspot refrigerator. A Krazy Kat cookie jar, black with huge whites of the eyes. A poster of a Charm magazine cover from 1931, featuring a coffeepot and cup.

  As the first light of the day brought a pink blush to the sky over the canyon, Jeffy poured a freshly brewed cup of a Jamaican blend. Standing at the kitchen sink, gazing out at the lane that curved up canyon, he had taken two sips when a rhythmic mechanical sound rose in the distance, quickly swelled in volume, and began to shudder through the house. He looked at the ceiling as a helicopter passed overhead, then glanced at the window in time to get a glimpse of the chopper above the oak trees: larger than a police helo, two engines, eight- or ten-passenger capacity, high-set main and tail rotors, maybe ten thousand pounds of serious machinery. It seemed menacing because it was far below minimum legal altitude for this area and moving fast, as if on an attack mission.

  In the wake of the aircraft came the sound of big engines. One, two, three, four black Suburbans raced past on Shadow Canyon Lane, without flashing lights or wailing sirens, but with the urgency of an FBI contingent in a movie about terrorists armed with a nuke.

  As the sound of one rotary wing receded, another racketed louder in the distance. Jeffy put down his coffee mug and hurried through the house to the front door. He stepped onto the porch just in time to see a second helo approaching from the west, out of a cloudless sky, the morning sun painting a pink cataract on the advanced glass cockpit.

  Maybe fifty yards away, where Shadow Canyon Lane connected with Oak Hollow Road, a fifth Suburban stood alongside the pavement, and a sixth angled across the roadway to form a blockade. Six men had gotten out of the two vehicles and were conferring.

  Barefoot, wearing Rocket Raccoon pajamas, yawning and blinking sleep from her eyes, Amity came out of the house and onto the porch as the second chopper passed low overhead. The palm fronds tossed, and the limbs of the live oaks shuddered. The enormous oaks were green throughout the year, though perpetually shedding their browner leaves, a swarm of which now beetle-clicked down through the black branches, small oval forms as crisp as cockroach carapaces.

  Amity said, “What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She said, “Something big.”

  “Sure looks like it.”

  “Are you freaked out? I am, a little.”

  “A little,” he agreed.

  “Who are they?”

  “Maybe FBI. The Suburbans are black, the choppers were black, but no markings on any of them.”

  “Don’t police cars and stuff have to be marked?”

  “I thought so.”

  After a silence, Amity said, “I better get dressed.”

  “Good idea.”

  On the doorstep, before returning to the house, she said, “And maybe you better hide the package that Ed left.”

  7

  Until Amity suggested a relationship between Ed’s visit the previous evening and the sudden appearance of the black-helicopter crowd, Jeffy hadn’t made a connection. When an old and delusional vagrant said he was being hunted, you imagined the stalker—if one actually existed—must be from the same community as his hapless quarry: a burnt-out drug addict who believed in the existence of something called “the key to everything,” or maybe a psychopath who targeted homeless men wearing polka-dot ties with plaid shirts. You didn’t leap to the conclusion that the posse would number more than a dozen men, some in SWAT gear, equipped with a few million dollars in ordnance.

  Sometimes, however, common sense required paranoia. It seemed that the political elites were striving, with admiration for George Orwell and rare unanimity, to ensure that the totalitarian state in the novel 1984 would be realized no later than fifty years after the author predicted.

  In the kitchen, Jeffy plucked the box off the table. It wasn’t heavy, suggesting that most of the contents were Styrofoam peanuts or some other kind of packing material.

  Indecisive, he stood listening to the helicopters—one whisking the air in the distance, one louder and nearer—considering where to conceal the package. He didn’t quite believe that the “swine” of whom Ed had spoken, whoever they might be, would storm into the house and ransack it room by room, drawer by drawer. However, every hidey-hole that he thought of seemed obvious if in fact those men boldly crossed his threshold.

  At last, he hurried into his workroom, one half of which was entirely devoted to the restoration of highly stylized Deco-period Bakelite radios.

  To the left of his workbench, shelves held eight radios of fabled brands—Fada, Sentinel, Bendix, Emerson, DeWald—that had been cleaned and polished; with their vibrant colors restored, they were objects of beauty and high style. They had been rewired, and new vacuum tubes had been installed. They could pull in AM stations as they had in the 1930s, although once you switched them on, the tubes had to warm up before a broadcast could be received.

  To the right of the bench, another set of shelves contained six scarred and discolored radios on which he had yet to begin work. He had bought them at swap meets, country auctions, and from a network of hoarders who collected all manner of items that other people thought were junk. He had paid as little as forty dollars and as much as two thousand per radio, depending on the knowledge of the seller who set the price. After he had restored it, passionate collectors would pay five, six, even ten thousand for a rare and beautiful specimen.

  The largest radio awaiting his attention was a Bendix model that appeared to be muddy brown. When cleaned and polished, however, it would be a rich butterscotch yellow with buttercup-yellow tuning knobs and tuning-window frame. The guts of the Bendix were on his workbench, and only the empty Bakelite shell stood on the shelf: eleven inches wide, eight inches tall, seven inches deep, not large enough to conceal the box that Ed had entrusted to him, although it might be large enough to hide whatever was in the box.

  He heard Ed’s warning voice in memory. You must not open it. Never!

  A helicopter swept over the house, so low that slabs of carved air like giant fists slammed the roof and rattled the windows.

  Even as unimpressive as the package lo
oked, it would draw attention from searchers precisely because it was unusual.

  Never open the box, Jeffrey. Never touch the thing in it.

  Jeffy had difficulty getting his head around the idea that rumpled, rheumy-eyed Ed hadn’t been sliding into dementia, after all. That something of great value and importance must be in the box. That a “demonic posse” might be after the old man. Even if all that was true, as the choppers and Suburbans suggested, nevertheless Ed must be exaggerating his enemies’ ruthlessness. Beasts? Murderers who would make an innocent man and his daughter disappear?

  The doorbell rang.

  He was pretty sure it wasn’t the postman with a certified-mail form that required a signature.

  The aircraft that had passed over the house now returned and hovered. In the downdraft from the rotary wing, palm trees thrashed so noisily that they could be heard in spite of the racket made by the helo.

  Jeffy’s heart thumped like that of a rabbit in the shadow of a predator. “Sorry, Ed. I should’ve taken you seriously.”

  He put the package on the workbench and tugged at the knot and stripped away the string.

  As someone on the front porch rang the doorbell again, someone began to hammer insistently at the back door.

  He took the lid off the box and then hesitated. The object was swaddled in plastic bubble wrap.

  Hide it well, Jeffrey. Save yourself and your girl!

  A man appeared at the window, veiled by the sheer curtain, a shadowy form backlit by the bright morning sun.

  Jeffy quickly unraveled the bubble wrap. The key to everything resembled a sleek smartphone, maybe five inches by less than three, but the stainless-steel casing featured neither buttons nor a charging port, nor any markings. The black screen wasn’t inset, but seemed to be an integral part of the case, as if the device had not been manufactured, but had been built one atom at a time by some 3-D printer more advanced than anything currently known.

  The doorbell rang, the fist pounded, the trees thrashed, the chopper clattered, and Jeffy tucked the item under the shell of the Bendix. He took the guts of that radio off his workbench and stashed them away in a drawer.

  Hurriedly, he tore the pasteboard box and its lid into small pieces. He dropped the debris and the string in the wastebasket and stirred the pieces up with the rest of the paper trash.

  8

  When Jeffy opened the door, three men loomed on the porch. The one at the front wore a black suit, white shirt, and black tie. He was as good-looking as any model in a GQ ad, his thick black hair slicked back like that of a film-noir character who reliably carried a switchblade and a coiled-wire garrote. His eyes were gray, his stare as sharp as a flensing knife.

  The two men behind him wore black cargo pants, black T-shirts, and black jackets loose enough perhaps to conceal shoulder rigs and pistols. They looked as if they were born to be trouble. One of them spoke into a walkie-talkie, and the helo lifted away from the house and drifted somewhat to the south.

  The guy in the suit might have thought he was smiling when he grimaced, but there was no friendliness in his voice. “John Falkirk, National Security Agency.” He presented an ID wallet with his photo.

  Jeffy felt most comfortable pretending to be dumb and rattled by the uproar in this previously sleepy canyon. He spoke rapidly, running sentences together. “What’s wrong, what’s happening, do we have to evacuate?”

  “This house is owned by a Jeffrey Coltrane,” said Falkirk. “Are you Mr. Coltrane?”

  “Yes, sir, that’s right, that’s me,” Jeffy said, nodding in agreement with himself. “What’s going on, all the helicopters, are we safe? I have a young daughter here.”

  Perhaps Falkirk thought that withholding reassurances from a befuddled citizen would inspire less guarded responses. Having put away his ID, the agent held up a smartphone on which he had summoned a photograph of Ed. “Do you know this man?”

  “Who is he?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  Jeffy squinted at the phone. “I’ve maybe seen him before.”

  “Where?”

  “I can’t say where.”

  “You can’t say where?”

  “No, sir. Maybe I’m wrong, never saw him. If I saw him, it was maybe just in town somewhere.”

  Falkirk resorted to an intimidating silence again, as if he’d been conducting an inflection analysis of every syllable Jeffy spoke while observing the degree of dilation of his pupils, and now needed to match the two data streams for evidence of deception. There was something of the machine about Falkirk.

  If the agent were less officious, Jeffy might have cooperated with him. However, he liked frumpy, delusional old Ed far more than he liked this man. Intuitively, he didn’t trust Falkirk any more than he would have trusted a guy with 666 tattooed on his forehead.

  “He’s a vagrant and fugitive,” the agent said. “That’s all you need to know. He lives in a small inflatable tent in the wild part of this canyon.”

  Jeffy crafted a frown. “Used to be nothing up canyon except coyotes and bobcats and the creatures they eat. It was better then.”

  “We believe this man walks into town at least a few times a week. He’d pass right by here. Could that be where you saw him?”

  “Maybe. I don’t spend much time on the porch. I’ve got a life.”

  “If he saw you, he might’ve stopped by for a chat. He’s a sociable guy.”

  Jeffy’s frown carved deeper into his face. “I’d never encourage one of those people. Like I said, I’ve got a young daughter to worry about.” He glanced at the two men who looked like SWAT team members who’d taken off their Kevlar vests to swing by the doughnut shop. He turned his attention to Falkirk again. “What’s going on here? How freaked out should I be? This vagrant kill someone?”

  “His name’s Dr. Edwin Harkenbach. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Not my doctor,” Jeffy said, shaking his head. “My doctor’s Ben Solerno. And my dentist is Jennifer Goshen. Thank God, I don’t need any specialists.”

  After staring at him in silence for a moment, Falkirk put away the phone and produced an official-looking document. “Mr. Coltrane, do you understand it’s a felony to lie to an agent of the NSA?”

  “Sure. I understand. Just like the FBI. Way it ought to be.”

  “I am herewith serving a search warrant for these premises. This is a matter of national security. Failure to comply with a court order of this nature may result in your arrest.”

  “You want to come in and look around?” Jeffy asked, accepting the warrant.

  “That’s the general idea. Just so you understand—you aren’t the specific target of a criminal investigation.” His icy stare seemed to belie his assurances. “These are FISA warrants issued pursuant to an urgent threat involving an individual who might have taken advantage of your goodwill. We have warrants for all seven houses on Shadow Canyon Lane.”

  “National security threat. Hey, far as I’m concerned, you don’t need a warrant for this house. It’s my civic duty, isn’t it? Come on in, gentlemen.”

  When Falkirk and his associates stepped into the foyer, Amity appeared in sneakers, jeans, a T-shirt featuring her favorite anime character, and a light denim jacket with a yellow winking-face emoji on the breast pocket. Owl-eyed, she said, “Daddy, what’s happening?”

  “These men are federal agents, sweetheart.”

  “What’s a federal agent?”

  She was playing dumb. He hoped she didn’t spread it on too thick. He doubted she would. “They’re like police officers, Amity. They’re looking for a bad man they think could be hiding here.”

  “We’re not just searching for Harkenbach,” Falkirk corrected. “We’re looking as well for any indication
that he has been here with or without your knowledge or is known to any person living on these premises.” He produced the smartphone and conjured Ed’s photograph for Amity. “Young lady, have you ever seen this man?”

  She hugged herself and frowned. “He’s like some drooling sicko.”

  “You know him?”

  “Nope. But he looks like some guy who’d give you candy to go for a ride with him, and then you’d never come home again. I know all about those perverts. Daddy’s warned me about them like ten thousand times.”

  Falkirk frowned at the photo as though he had never seen Edwin Harkenbach in that light, then put the phone away. “Mr. Coltrane, do you understand what a thorough search of the premises will entail?”

  “Turn the place upside down, I suppose.”

  “My men and I are wearing body cams. You need to accompany us room by room to assure yourself there is no theft or vandalism. If there’s any sensitive area you have an issue about, discuss it with us. We’ll see if we can compromise on the approach to it.”

  Jeffy assumed that any area he mentioned would be searched with special attention.

  Maybe the same thought occurred to Amity, and she meant to raise their suspicion in order ultimately to deflate it. “Hey, you aren’t gonna search Snowball’s cage, are you? You’ll scare him silly.”

  9

  While Amity held Snowball and reassured him, one of Falkirk’s two underlings took everything out of the five-by-three-foot cage: the gnawing blocks, the exercise wheel, the miniature ladder with the observation platform at the top, the little blue mouse house with white shutters and a roof of shingles painted like slices of cheese, the drifts of shredded newspapers in which the shy rodent liked to burrow and hide away. One agent soiled two fingers and realized what he had touched and said, “Hey, the little bastard shits in his own cage,” and Amity said, “Well, he’s a mouse.” Jeffy showed the intruder to the powder bath to wash his hands, whereafter the guy took the lid off the toilet tank to look for whatever, most likely for the key to everything.