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Finished the next scene!
Cyndia wheezed as she parked her bike in the garage. The time back had to be a new bike-riding record. She need to go to the drug store and get the film developed, but not without a weapon for self-defense. But what could she carry that wouldn’t be illegal?
She was still considering her options as she reached up to pull the garage door down when an orange globe of Jell-O as big as she rolled across the driveway and yard. It plunged into the border bushes. Cyndia blinked a couple of times, and stepped out of the garage.
“Did you see how fast that thing moved!” The gate in the privacy fence around the Millers’ backyard opened, and the two officers from last night came out. “When did we turn into the X-Files?” Officer Hilden continued as Peterson closed the gate.
Cyndia jogged a little down the driveway. “What’s going on? Can I help?”
“The situation is well under control, so just go inside and lock up,” Officer Peterson answered.
“That isn’t what I saw last night.”
“We know that, okay?” Hilden’s voice rose with irritation. “The professionals are handling this, young lady. Now go inside where you’ll be safe.”
Cyndia bit back a snarl. “Fine.” Some of the snarl leaked out anyway. “Whatever it was rolled down the street.” She pointed up the street and away from the woods.
“Thank you.” Peterson headed toward the patrol car. “We better take the car if we’re going to catch up with it.”
“Whatever it is and why ever it broke into a crime scene.” Hilden jumped into the passenger side of the patrol car.
Cyndia closed the garage door and locked it, but stood next to it inside the garage until she heard the patrol car leave. No sirens, so she guessed they didn’t want to warn whatever the orange thingy was. But she did know why crimes scenes were broken into; by investigators who didn’t have official police sanction. Heading into the house, she went straight back to the unoccupied boy’s room. The last boy Mrs. Baton had kept was into water guns. She found a pistol-sized one in the toy chest, and filled it with a cleaner found under the kitchen cabinet. It might not work on alien body chemistry, but she felt better with it tucked into her jeans waistband—in the back, just like the undercover cops on TV did.
She carried her toolbox of equipment to the point in the hedge that the orange thingy had dived through. All that was beyond the hedge was the still heavily wooded area not cleared for houses. She didn’t think it was working with the blue man with the deformed feet. If they were working together, they would be together. She pushed her way through the hedge break. The tall trees filtered the sunlight. The underbrush was kept cut down to prevent anyone not buying because the lot was unattractive. And there was no place for the orange thingy to hide.
Or was there? Cyndia stepped closer to the center of the lot that had been cleared of trees for a house that was never built. The sun was still mostly overhead and should have illuminated the clearing, but there a nearly circular shadow on the ground filling the clearing. She stretched out her hand as she moved closer to the shadow. It flattened against a cold wall. The trees that were on the other side of the clearing rippled under her hand.
“Some kind of illusion to hide something,” she said under her breath. She kept her hand on the smooth metal and started around the circumference of the object. Facing the lake, she found a ramp extended to the ground and a lighted doorway at the top of the ramp cut into the picture of the trees. Cyndia smirked at her idea and pulled the camera out of her toolbox. “Maybe I can sell this stuff to the Enquirer and pay for police academy.” She snapped a couple of pictures of the doorway and saved the last exposures on the roll for inside. Then she went up the ramp.
Inside was a normal-sized room, an office desk, a couple of seats bolted to the floor around the desk, two doors leading away from this room. Except for the stark metal and lack of decoration, it could be anybody’s office. “So much for exotic alien technology.” She finished off the roll in the disposable camera and put it back in the toolbox.
The door slid shut behind her. Cyndia jumped. “Stay calm, it’s a door. There has to be a way of opening the door.” Her heart still hammered in her chest, but her hands didn’t shake as she ran around the metal outside of the seam of the door. No buttons, no doorknob, no movement no matter how hard she waved her arms—ruling out infared. Her ears felt like they were burning. “Okay, orange thingy! I’m pretty sure this is your space ship and I don’t want a one-way trip to Pluto!”
Another door opened and an orange slug-shaped blob slithered out. Cyndia aimed the water gun at it. “Let me out now!”
The orange blob moved faster than she gave it credit—straight for her. She fired the water gun at it, but the cleaning solution didn’t stop it. She jumped to dodge it, but the orange thing grabbed her before she hit the ground. She beat her fist against it to make it let her go, but it was hitting Jell-O. Warm Jell-O, tough Jell-O that didn’t break, covering her head. Her lungs burned.
Something hard pressed against the back of her neck and it stung. Suffocated by a giant alien jelly fish? At least that wasn’t a demise predicted by all those mysteries.
The orange thing pulled back from her face. Cyndia inhaled before pushing against the orange blob again. “Let me go! Let me go!”
It was saying something; at least she thought the sounds coming from it were supposed to be talk. It finished pulling away, and she landed on the floor. The water gun and toolbox landed nearby. Cyndia rolled to her hands and feet, and stood up.
The blob was keeping his distance now, continuously making those noises. He was changing shape, forming legs and arms and a head.
Having a head to yell at clicked something in her head. “Who the hell do you think you are? What the hell did you do to me? Who the hell are you? What the hell are you doing here?” Her fists balled up.
The head had a face on it now, a human face in orange Jell-O. And he was stilling twilling and chortling at her. Anger overwhelmed her fear, and her hands curled into fists again. But fists were so effective earlier. She folded her arms over her chest. “I want out. Let me out.” I can be reasonable despite what Mrs. Baton says. “Let me out right now.” Oh this was hopeless, he obviously didn’t understand English. “They leave the language barrier out of tabloid stories.”
“Twilt… sorry. I am sorry for the incursion. It was the only way to mitigate communication. The nanobots should have established a link by now.”
Cyndia grabbed the back of her neck. She could see something metal floating inside his orange body. “You put robots in me!”
“Tiny ones.” The orange, translucent lips smiled. “Otherwise, we could not speak. They translate. It is common practice when you have not time to learn the language.”
She should stay angry or scared. Those feelings were ebbing from his apologetic tone and her need to know. “Who are you?”
“My name is Murdock. I am an IGA agent. Inter-Galactic Agency for the Apprehension of Felons and the Investigation of Criminal Activities,” he added.
“You’re an alien police officer?”
“For all purposes, yes. And you are?”
“Cyndia Taeurs. I guess you’re here tracking the blue man that was on the porch where I live last night. I found his crashed spaceship and tracks that led to the lake. The local authorities think it’s an airplane crash.”
“You found my saucer and another spaceship. How did you find my saucer? The cloaking technology is on.”
“Your cloaking technology needs work. You can still see the shadow on the ground. You are after the blue man, right?”
“I am tracking an escapee. IGA did not anticipate his coming to such an insular planet.” Murdock moved to his desk. “The ship crashed twenty-five kilometers from here. This is the closest population center.”
Cyndia felt the hair on her arms prickle. “What did the escapee do?”
“He murdered,” Murdock glanced at her, “whole families.”
“The Millers.” She bit her lip. “Do you have a mug shot?”
“Mug… shot… are you thirsty?”
“No, it’s a picture used to identify people when they’ve been arrested.”
“Ah,” he turned to what looked like a laptop computer on the desk. “This is Thestern. He is an Odrichan.”
A figure rotated on the screen. A blue humanoid, his torso and head covered in feathers, his legs lost the feathers to hard scales and webbed feet. “I knew it wasn’t make-up!”
“What? You have seen him?”
“Last night on my porch. He killed the Millers. The house that the police chased you from. He must be a serial killer to feel the need to kill right after crashing here. I found the tracks from the crash site. He ran out of the crash, through the woods, and swam across the lake to find victims.” She tore her gaze from the rotating figure and picked up the toolbox. “I kept telling the cops it wasn’t a mask or make-up.” She opened the toolbox, and pulled out the plastic bag with the blue feathers. “I hope these are his. I took pictures of everything.” She pulled the disposable camera out next.
Murdock didn’t turn his head; the facial features slid across it to look at Thestern’s revolving image and back up to her face. “Is this who you saw?”
“Yes.”
“Sit down. Tell me what happened.” He turned off the rotating figure.
The chair in front of the desk was surprisingly comfortable. She set the plastic envelope and the camera on the desk between them. He settled behind the desk and listened as she went over last night one more time. How she had just gotten up and saw Thestern through the window. How she and the cops found the blood, the footprint, and the Millers. How the cops and Mr. Gregory had to pry Mrs. Gregory off of her. She continued with her reasoning on the crash site, finding the trail to the lake, coming home to see the police chasing him out of the Millers’ house, and finding his saucer. He only interrupted to ask what a certain word she had used really meant. Completely different from the grilling last night, and she appreciated that.
“You have an excellent grasp of essential details and a concise recall of them.”
“Thanks. This is only the five hundredth time going over it. And I haven’t even been interviewed by the press yet.”
“Press?”
“Reporters, journalists.”
“I understand.” He had a really good disgusted expression for a mass of orange. Murdock’s tentacle picked up the envelope. “I can perform a DNA analysis on these.” The translucent face scrunched with confusion aimed at the camera. “I am afraid that is incompatible technology.”
“Okay, I’ll get them developed. So what are you?” Murdock aimed the confused face at her as she scooped the camera back into the toolbox. “You called the blue man an Odrichan. Thestern is his name, so Odrichan is what he is, so what are you?”
“Odrichan is Thestern’s species.” The confusion cleared. “The solids call my species Blobs or Shapeshifters. What we call ourselves does not translate.”
Cyndia frowned. “But you have the nanobots inside?”
“We still must learn a language that the nanobots can translate. And there are still concepts that the nanobots have issues with translating.” The orange face conveyed no emotion as it looked at her. “Thestern will kill again just as he did on Odricha 4.”
“That’s unacceptable. We have to stop the psychopath.” Cyndia crossed her arms.
“It was difficult enough the first time. I need to search for clues Thestern may have left behind.”
“Why did you run from the cops? If you’re a shapeshifter, why didn’t you become a houseplant or something inside?”
The brow ridge over Murdock’s eye hollows lifted. “I can create the shape. Provided it is the same mass. But I cannot change my coloration. I left the area to prevent an armed confrontation, per IGA regulations on dealing with primitive planets.”
“The police must have turned on the Millers’ burglar alarm after Forensics finished last night. I didn’t even get to see them work, so busy trying to make me change my statement.”
“You speak very knowledgably about these crimes. Are you in law enforcement?”
“No, I’m too young. I’m a mystery junkie. It’s something special, to be the detective, to be able to see what nobody else can. They’re the only ones who want to help people these days. Sure, they get paid—‘cause they got to eat too—but it ain’t compensation for the trouble they go through.” She glanced at his expression and suddenly felt warm all over. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to give you my whole treatise on the subject.”
“On the converse, it is very illuminating. I felt the same way when I was still seeking my life’s work.” Murdock’s face went through the motions of sighing. “However, it does not solve the delimia present. I am prohibited from the crime scenes.”
Cyndia uncrossed her arms as she leaned forward. “Well, I don’t know how to break into a house, but since I was the Millers’ only babysitter, I have their security code to deactivate the alarm.”
“Extraordinary, you have valuable knowledge and an inkling of how it should be applied. You may be the best qualified person to help me on this planet.” Murdock moved from the desk. His bottom half hadn’t made legs and he moved across the room like a slug.
“Wait a minute,” Cyndia followed him to the door. “I’m qualified ‘cause I like mysteries?”
“And you stayed and talked rather than running and screaming.”
“Oh. So what do you want me to do?”
The door led to a curving hallway. The first door on the right opened into a small room circled with shelves.
“I have to see the crime scene. Since I cannot go personally, I need you to deliver my robot eyes.” He reached into a bin on a chest-high shelf and pulled out a cylinder as long as her arm. “All I need you to do is put this in the house and press this button.” It was the only button on the top of the cylinder. “Let it back out and it will return to the saucer.”
“Kind of big for a flying camera, isn’t it?”
“It has scanning capabilities as well. Not as advanced as a coronerbot, but it will suffice. Will you do this?”
“Yeah, no problem. I’ll be Archie Goodwin to your Nero Wolfe.” Cyndia took the cylinder.
“Who are you talking about?”
“More fiction, Nero Wolfe is a detective who never left his house so he hired Archie to do all the leg work. Works for us, right?”
“I submit to your superior knowledge of the stories. You best go now. I will analyze these feathers while waiting the bot’s return.”
Cyndia left the hidden spaceship. She hugged the cylinder to her chest. Aliens and alien cops, and she was helping in a real investigation! The house was dark; Mrs. Baton hadn’t returned from real estate selling. Good thing, Cyndia didn’t want to deal with her.
A peek through the front door window revealed nothing amiss in the neighborhood, and more importantly, no cops at the Millers. She skirted around the end of the fence that didn’t reach the bank of the lake, and was in the Millers’ back yard. The rope ladder up to Harry and Frank’s tree house swayed. Margaret was too little to climb up it. Cyndia swallowed hard, and trotted up to the French windows that opened up to the patio in the back yard.
The Millers had changed their locks so one key could unlock all the doors. And they had thoughtfully given her a copy once she proved trustworthy. She hugged the cylinder with one arm to her body while quickly unlocking the door, getting inside, and punching into the code on the alarm pad next to the door. She took a deep breath, she was under the time limit. She set the cylinder on the floor right in front of the door, and pressed the button. Lights flashed along the sides. It lifted up and bobbed through the kitchen, heading toward their living room. Cyndia shut the door and turned quickly, banging her knee on one of the patio chair-side tables.
She sat down on the wooden deck with her back against the house and rubbed her knee. Robots might be a way to go with forensics. You could program them to be impartial, but could you program them to think of everything?
“Hey!” The shout jerked Cyndia to the present. Billy O’Neal, another babysitting charge, put his hands on his hips. “Are you supposed to be here?”
“No, I’m hiding. Could you be quiet about it?”
“I left my Spider-man in the tree house. Can I get it?”
“Sure.”
The seven-year-old scrambled up the rope ladder and brought the Spider-man action figure down in his teeth. Deciding not to leave the yard, he sat on the grass in front of Cyndia. “Mommy says Frank and Harry ain’t coming back. They had to go to Heaven.”
“Your mommy’s right.” Cyndia pulled her knees in and rested her chin on them.
“Mommy says the cops are going to catch the man who killed them.”
“That’s what cops do. Even cops from outer space.”
“There’s cops in outer space?”
“There has to be cops every where.”
Billy thought about that. “Yeah, I guess so. But how will we know when the cops catch him?”
There was a tapping noise on the glass. The cylinder nudged against the paned glass in the French window. Cyndia opened it and the cylinder zipped past them, heading over the lake to the forest.
She looked down at Billy’s wide eyes. “Well if our cops catch him, it’ll be on the news. If the outer space cop catches him, I’ll tell you.”
Billy turned from Cyndia to track the cylinder. “Wow.”
“Hey, don’t tell anybody, okay? We don’t want a cop hunted like E.T.”
“No, ma’am. I got to go home now. Bye.”
Cyndia took a deep breath and took a swipe at the moistness leaking from her eyes. Can’t break down now; that won’t do the Millers’ any good. She turned the alarm back on and locked the patio door. She still had to get the pictures developed.
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