Instinct by Jason Hough (ebook reader web TXT) 📗

He’s about to sweep the dust into the gutter when he sees me and thinks better of it, fishing a small bronze dustbin from his back pocket as if he carried it everywhere. I stop and roll the window down.

“Morning,” I say.

“Greetings,” he says theatrically. “It’s Officer Whittaker, yes?”

I nod. “Sorry, I’m still learning names. Can’t believe we haven’t met yet. You are?”

He crosses the empty street to stand by my door, offering a hand. “Damian Blackwood,” he says with a little bow.

I shake his hand, grinning despite myself. It’s the man I saw wearing a black trench coat, that night after Johnny’s funeral. “Not your given name, I assume?”

He replaces the dustbin handle-first into his back pocket and makes a zipping motion across his lips. “All part of the persona.”

“Your shop,” I say, eyeing the window displays, “must do pretty good business in a place like this, huh?”

“Oh,” he says, “you can’t even imagine. People will buy anything, to my constant yet well-concealed amusement.”

“As long as you’re not promising results.”

He turns slightly and points to a sign above the door. More of a crest, cast in bronze. It looks very old. The image depicts a vaguely Egyptian figure, one of those ones with the head of a dog, holding an ankh in one hand and some kind of laurel in the other, all surrounded by a star with yin-yang symbols at the points. Above all this a phrase is carved, in Latin: Nihil hic actu operatur.

“What’s it say?” I ask.

“It says ‘Nothing here actually works,’ ” he replies.

I laugh gleefully. “That’s awesome.”

“The store pays the bills, yes, and… well, allows me to focus on my own, err, hobbies.”

“Ohhhkay. Bit weird. Not going to ask.”

With a sheepish grin, Damian knocks twice on the hood of my cruiser and wanders back to resume his sweeping, the knowing grin never leaving his face.

I drive on, my skin feeling just a little clammy at the way he said “hobbies.” The sign is pretty good, though. No doubt about that. What it must be like to go through life on the right side of an inside joke. These last few days have felt like the opposite of that.

Leaving both the town and the dwindling morning rain behind, I make my way up the winding mountain road, stopping again at Last Chance coffee to refill my travel mug, but instead of continuing on up to the lake I take a right. This road is new, only one lane wide, and serves a singular purpose. Leaning forward as far as I can, chin pressed against the steering wheel, I glance up at the steep mountainside. It’s densely forested. A wall of green. There, in the middle of all that lush nature, stands one tree about twice as tall as the others, and so obviously fake it’s almost funny. The cell phone tower is too thick, its branches too stubby, and it’s painted slightly the wrong shade of green. Then there’s the rectangular panels that protrude from its upper reaches, an array of drum-shaped antennas, and a few satellite dishes mixed in for good measure.

I drive on, following the access road for a good half mile around hairpin corners and rutted dips. At one point I have to get out and unlock a gate. It’s weak as far as security goes. Just a pair of thick metal poles attached on hinges at either side and padlocked in the middle. The key is on my cruiser’s key chain, carefully labeled by Greg. I swing the gates open and pull the car through, deciding to leave the barricade open behind me, since I don’t plan to be here long. The road goes on another few hundred yards before coming to the base of the “tree.”

The tower, some three hundred feet tall, sits on a concrete pad about twenty-five feet square. Surrounding this is a high chain-link fence with barbed wire on top. There’s a whole slew of beige utility boxes just within the perimeter, some as big as a car. They all sport signs with various warnings: risk of electric shock, primarily. The whole place hums with the current running through it.

It’s early still and the sun is low, illuminating only the top of the tower, which is about twice as tall as the trees around it. Up close it’s almost comical how wrong the thing is. The color’s off, the branches look hilariously stunted, and the height is… well, ridiculous. Another detail occurs to me: it’s totally unaffected by the wind.

My phone rings. I glance at the screen, hoping to see Kyle’s name, but instead I see the indicator that this is a forwarded call from the Silvertown Police station number. When no one’s at the office it gets routed to Greg’s or my phone, depending on the day, but with him gone it’s set to go to me exclusively.

“Silvertown Police, this is Officer Whittaker.”

“Uh, hi, yeah, this is Sean Dennis with StellarComm?”

The StellarComm logo is all over the gear behind the fence I’m standing next to, and I’m guessing I triggered an alarm coming in here. “How can I help you, Mr. Dennis?”

“Well I’m up here on the access road to our tower there, and the gate is wide open. Unlocked.”

“Okay, and?”

“Well no one else but me should be up there today, so… well, I just thought you might want to know. I was going to head up to do some maintenance, but if someone’s up there… I guess I thought you might…”

“Come on up, Sean,” I say. “I’m the one who’s up here. I left the gate open.”

“Oh. Oh!” He sighs, a relief that is gone just as quickly as it appeared. “Wait, how come you’re there? Did something happen?”

I kick a pebble away from my boot. “No no. Just a routine visit,” I say. “Come on up.”

A few minutes later his white van rolls into the small parking area in front of the fence. It’s a Ford utility model with windowless sides, a StellarComm