A Small Gray Dot

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.

Part Five: The Binqua

Chapter Thirty-two

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.