Bea Cannon - A Small Gray Dot

“That’s fine, Doctor. If you can get him, I’ll pay. Tell him to bring a weapon.”

He nodded and left the kitchen.

The boy tore into his sandwich as if he hadn’t eaten in a while. That didn’t mean he hadn’t.

“Terrance, how old are you?” I asked.

He swallowed and took a sip of juice. “Thirteen, sir, but I’ll be fourteen next month. He grinned and added, “You can call me Terry, sir. The doc says he likes th’ name “Terrence” so that’s what he calls me. Everybody else calls me Terry.”

I chuckled. “Okay, Terry it is.” I’d noticed the doctor, who’d said he liked my name, seemed to prefer to call me Tennessee so I knew what the boy meant. His age could explain the voracious appetite. Kids that age ate a lot. Of course, it could also mean that whoever he lived with wasn’t feeding him well because he was pretty thin. Unfortunately, that happened a lot these days. After all, they had left his on his own for several days. I finished eating, gulped down some orange juice, and wiped my mouth.

The boy couldn’t have been any older than six on the day of the Event. “Have you ever been to school?”

He nodded and stopped eating as he explained. “I went to kindergarten an’ first grade, sir. But that’s it. Mrs. Harris – I live with her an’ Mr. Harris, and their two little girls – sometimes she ‘low’s me to sit in on their school lessons but most of th’ times I have to go to work.”

“Work?”

“Yes, sir.”

I didn’t want to keep him from eating so I quit asking questions, but as soon as I got the chance, I was going to ask him a few more. Such as why the people with whom he was living didn’t take him with them when they went out of town, or at least not lock him out of the house while they were gone. And why did he have to work.

The doctor came back. “All right. I called my neighbor across the street and she’s sending her son over. Two friends are spending the weekend with them and they’re coming with him. Now, I don’t know the friends but Duncan is a reasonable fellow. He won’t charge you a lot for his help and he knows his way around the neighborhood.”

That was good. Three guys were even better than one.

Five minutes later, the doorbell rang. The doctor went to get the door while I got my jacket and pulled it on. I’d forgotten about the gun I’d taken from the guard. I’d put it in one of my inside jacket pockets and it was still there. The .25 I’d taken from Talbert was in a pocket too. I already had the 9mm and didn’t need another small gun so I started to leave it on the closet shelf. I changed my mind because one never knows what might come in handy and it wasn’t in the way. Then I went to the foyer.

Three guys with rifles were standing there. The doctor introduced Duncan Hamilton who introduced his friends. Duncan appeared to be around my age – my real age of thirty-two not the one I appeared to be – the one introduced as Percy Jones looked a little younger, the other one, Lem Bowman, was about forty. The friends didn’t live in Blue Heaven but were visiting with Duncan over the weekend. They were all sizable guys with Percy being the biggest.

Duncan eyed me as he shook my hand. “Hey, didn’t I see you up at the Hole earlier?”

I admitted it.

“Well, what’s the story? The doc says you wanna go get somebody back from that weirdo bastard, Bedlow.”

“Yes.” I raised an eyebrow. Seemed as if he didn’t much care for the head of security. “I’m a tracker, and someone at Semptor has kidnapped the person I came here to find and I’m going to get her back.”

Duncan peered at me. “Damn. Semptor’s in on this? Okay, you gonna tell us now exactly who’s kidnapped?

I nodded. “Yes, Semptor’s involved, and the person that was abducted is Morgan Effingham. Bedlow had her picked up on the orders of his boss.” I shook my head with irritation. “I got her away from them once, and we were supposed to spend the night here and leave later but after the doctor and I were asleep, she tried to leave Blue Heaven on her own.”

He shook his head and blew out a breath. “That’s not good if she don’t know about this place. Morgan Effingham… say, is she any relation to the Effingham’s that owns the shipping company?”

“Yes. Her sister hired me to find her.”

“Why did she leave?”

“She was afraid. I think because of something she learned.” I wasn’t mentioning the aliens. That would be hard to swallow without proof and there was no time for that at the moment. “It has to do with why she was kidnapped. There’s no time right now, but once we get her back I’ll give you the whole story.”

He nodded. “Okay, I’m good to go. I used to be a guard and that sonofabitch wanted us to detain people for no good damn reason at all. That they ask questions is not a good reason to hassle folk. I finally had some words with him about it and then I quit. He hasn’t liked me since. Always trying to give me grief whenever he sees me. I’m about to move out of Blue Heaven because he’s kept me from working anywhere else in here and I had to get a job out of the neighborhood. The bastard has me stopped every time I come or go, and I’m tired of it.” He shook his head again. “Never woulda thought the asshole would get into kidnapping, though.”

He definitely didn’t like him.

“How much you paying?” asked Percy. Apparently, he didn’t care what the story was as long as he got paid.

I studied them. I didn’t have time to haggle. “Two hundred a piece.”

Duncan nodded. “That’ll do.” His friends agreed.

“Okay. Let’s get moving.”

The three men followed me out into the night.

NO ONE WANTED TO GET LOST SO WE DIDN’T talk on the way to Maple Street.

Maple sloped sharply downhill from Main Street and the houses were a mixture of single- and two-stories. I could see only one struggling street lamp off in the distance.

“He’s got cameras so we need to stop before we get to his house,” said Duncan when we started down Maple.

We pulled up behind the large bush in the yard of the house three doors away. Duncan pointed down the street.

“Bedlow’s is a single-story with a loft but it’s too dark to see it from here. It’s even hard to see it in daylight until you get right up on it because it’s down in a dip.”

I studied the outline of the darkened house at which we’d halted and saw no way to use it to spy on Bedlow’s place. No detached garage with a convenient ladder. One would think that with the street name of “Maple” there’d be many such trees. There wasn’t a one in sight, so no tree to climb.

I motioned for them to follow me and we proceeded across the approximately fifty-foot yard of the dark house next to Bedlow’s. There was about a twenty-foot vacant span between the two houses, and if his surveillance system was similar to the one in Dr. Bennett’s living room, it looked out on the empty span. But, there was a row of overgrown holly bushes separating the yard from the space between the houses, and since Bedlow’s house sat lower, we could remain hidden while we cased the place. It wasn’t ideal but it would do.

We crouched behind the holly bushes. I lay down on the ground and carefully parted some of the prickly branches and looked down on the house. There was no car or jeep parked out front. Whoever brought Morgan had either come and gone, or were parked elsewhere. It had taken us ten minutes to get to Maple Street and we left about twenty minutes after Terry came to the doctor’s door. He said it took him around ten minutes to get there – give or take five minutes – so I estimated about forty-five minutes had passed. More than enough time for Bedlow to inform Henderson of Morgan’s recapture, so it was possible she was no longer there. But, I had to be sure, and if she wasn’t there, I needed to find out where she was.