A Festival of Murder (14 page)

“Then
this isn’t a burglary.”

“No.”
Nicholas felt his facial muscles stiffening with resolve. “It means there’s
only one place I need to go.”

Rather
than drive down Main Street, Nicholas took advantage of his four-wheel drive to
climb off-road and pick his way slowly through the forest. He found the tree
with the single reflector nailed to its trunk and after that it was easy to
locate what constituted a driveway in Hightop.

In
the gray, depressing daylight, the red blinking lights stood out clearly, which
was the intention. They were mounted on an array on top of Captain Sam’s
trailer to catch the attention of passing UFOs. As if after traveling thousands
of miles across the galaxy, they still needed guidance on where to park.

After
he’d pulled in behind the battered trailer, Nicholas walked around to the side
of the silver structure, opposite its door. Directly ahead, through the trees,
he could see the lake where Rocky Johnson had drowned. Not too far of a walk,
though it wouldn’t be easy at night during heavy snow. It was doable if a man was
determined enough, and Captain Sam didn’t lack for determination.

“So
convenient it’s scary,” Nicholas said with some satisfaction.

A
bird pooped on his head.

He
cursed and danced back, shielding his face with his hand as he glared up at the
offending fowl. Except it wasn’t a mischievous bird overhead that needed to be
shot down, but a man. Thankfully, he was clothed. The man shifted slightly,
knocking more snow onto the spot where Nicholas had been standing.

“What’re
you doin’ snoopin’ around here, Trilby?” Captain Sam yelled down from his perch
in a tree.

“What’re
you doing hiding up there?” Nicholas yelled back.

The
man had to be a good fifty feet in the air. Until now, Nicholas hadn’t been
aware trees could grow that high, much less someone could—or would want
to—climb them. Captain Sam appeared to be sitting in some kind of sling, which
cradled his flat behind. Cramponlike spikes were clipped to his boots, each
blade jammed into the bark to keep him from sliding down and making a mess of
himself.

“Are
you up there because of aliens?” Nicholas asked.

Captain
Sam ran the back of his wrist beneath his nose. “Maybe I am. Maybe I ain’t.”

The
reply told Nicholas everything he needed to know about how this conversation
would go. He scraped together his limited supply of patience.

“I
need to talk to you. Please come down.”

“What
do you want, Trilby? I can’t see into your bedroom from here if that’s what’s
got your panties in a bunch today.”

Nicholas
took a deep breath, reminding himself that this was a man who was a true
hermit. While he himself might appreciate solitude, Captain Sam believed it was
the only way to exist. It was only on the day that the
Estes Park News
printed their story on Nicholas’s abduction that Captain Sam had shown up on
his doorstep, paper in hand and a nasty scowl winding through his scraggly
beard. Previous to then, Nicholas had been completely unaware of the man’s existence
even though they lived a ten minutes’ drive apart.

“What
were you doing at my place today? I warned you that if you trespassed again I’d
call the police.”

“I
ain’t done nothin’ so why are you out here harassin’ me?”

“You
broke into my cabin just now. I have a witness.”

“You
ain’t got nothin’ on me ’cause I didn’t do nothin’. Besides, I don’t care what
business you got goin’ on over there. You ain’t the center of my universe,
Trilby. Not by a longshot.”

“No
one else would even consider breaking into my place.”

“There
you go, jumpin’ to conclusions ’cause you got a closed mind. You say, ‘Captain
Sam, he’s a weirdo. He’s the kinda man you don’t let near your families or
spare a decent hello for. Of course, he done broke into your cabin. He’s the
only criminal we got out here, right? Let’s blame everythin’ on the man who
lives out by hisself!’”

Chagrined
because Captain Sam was dead-on, Nicholas said calmly, “It’s not like that.
Come down, please. You said you wanted to talk to me. Now is your chance.”

More
snow fell, which he had to dodge. Nicholas couldn’t prove the other man was
trying to hit him with it. Then again, he couldn’t prove he wasn’t.

“Captain
Sam, you’re the one who said you had to speak to me. You have some great secret
to share, right?”

“Ha!
You know nothing ’bout secrets, ’specially keepin’ ’em. I know things that
would curl your hair.” Captain Sam spat in a long arc that Nicholas carefully
tracked to an eagle’s nest in a neighboring tree. “I come from a long line of
distinguished secret keepers.” When Nicholas looked up at him, uncomprehending,
Captain Sam clarified in a tone that suggested he thought Nicholas was an
idiot: “I’m from a military family.”

“Air
Force?”

Captain
Sam startled, his eyes narrowing into smaller, beadier pits.

“Air
Force it is,” Captain Sam said slowly, suspicion written all over him. “How’d
you know that?”

“Oh,
please. For one thing, you’re a so-called ‘Captain.’ For another, the Air Force
has been directly or indirectly involved with UFO sightings more than any other
branch of the military.” When Captain Sam grunted, Nicholas said, “So you’re a
vet—”

“I
ain’t no such a thing. I never said I was, did I?” Captain Sam kept his eyes on
the skies. “I said my family was. Great granddaddy, my granddaddy, my daddy . . .”
He spat again with force. “But I couldn’t join up, on account of my eyes. All
messed up, don’t focus right. Nothing I could do . . .” His
words trailed off in a mumble. “I don’t need no eagle eyes to see them aliens
though,” he added quickly. “That’s what I told my mama. My daddy died before I
could prove it to him, but I know he’s watchin’ and he’ll be able to rest in
peace once I make him proud. I’ll forgive him then for all the things he said.”

Embarrassment
tinged his voice, and though Nicholas never would have imagined it happening,
he felt a twinge of pity for Captain Sam.

“I
take it you’re an only son?”

“That
ain’t none of your business!”

“It
was just a question.”

“I
don’t want your pity! I’m gonna meet aliens one day. And I’m gonna record every
darn thing that happens. None of your fake amnesia bullcrap.”

Holding
onto his temper with both reins, Nicholas said, “For all I know, the aliens
experimented on me and then erased my memory of the fact.”

“Your
memory loss ain’t on account of the aliens, Trilby.” Captain Sam tapped his
temple. “You’ve got mental problems.”

“Do
I?” Any sympathy for the man rapidly dwindled. Nicholas could hear his teeth
grinding together and had to force his jaw to relax.

“Yep.
Your problem is you can’t handle the unexpected. Everything’s gotta be nice and
neat and perfect so’s you can control it. If you can’t, you get scared and you
don’t wanna play no more. Those aliens sure took control, didn’t they, Trilby?
Bet they scared the pants right off a you.” Captain Sam turned his face up to
the cloudy sky. “You was the last person they should’ve visited.”

“Agreed!”
Nicholas blurted. He studied the tree Captain Sam was straddling and considered
climbing the thing so he could slap some sense into the other man. “I never
wanted the aliens to visit me, and I certainly never asked for the media circus
that resulted, or for my privacy to be encroached upon by the founding of this
town.”

“Then
why’d you do all the interviews?”

Nicholas
rubbed at his forehead where a headache was building.

“Because
I needed someone to tell me what had just happened to me.” He winced at how
lame it sounded, but sometimes the truth was lame. “I needed someone to tell me
I wasn’t crazy and provide a rational explanation for my experience because I
didn’t have one. However, instead of providing me with answers, everyone pelted
me with more questions. I couldn’t take it any longer. That’s probably why I
was driven to forget it all. The stress pushed me over the edge.”

“The
first one—the one for the
Estes Park News
—that one was different from
the rest,” Captain Sam grunted from his high perch. He scanned the gloomy
skies. “That’s the one that made me sit up and take notice. Made me read it
sixteen times. The rest of ’em, they glossed over the important bits, only
talked about the spaceship. But in that first article you said somethin’ that
you didn’t say in the others.” He glared down at Nicholas. “You remember? Or
did you forget that, too?”

“No,”
Nicholas said, too weary to be alarmed that the other man had read an article
about him nearly two dozen times. “I remember what I said. It’s the event
itself that seems to have disappeared from my mind.”

“You
told that reporter that the aliens tried to communicate with you. You didn’t
tell that to the other reporters. Clammed right up about it. Why?”

Captain
Sam couldn’t quite conceal his hunger for an answer and Nicholas couldn’t blame
him. That first article had been titillating because, as Captain Sam had
pointed out, Nicholas had mentioned the aliens. In subsequent articles he had
described only their craft and how it had sucked him from his bedroom.

“I
don’t remember anything that happened to me,” he said to Captain Sam, “but I
remember what I said in that article.” His eyes lost their focus as he
concentrated. “I told the reporter that I’d felt an alien presence in my mind,
that I sensed it wanted to impart a message to me. There was a purpose to them
pulling me up into their ship, if only I could understand it.”

The
hush over the forest, the kind of quiet that could only be found in the
mountains when snow muffled all sound, broke him out of his reverie. Surprised
by Captain Sam’s silence, he looked up. The other man wasn’t scowling at him
but was staring at him as a starved dog would stare at a steak that its abusive
owner dangled before him.

“Did
you, Trilby?” he asked. “Did you understand their message?”

Nicholas
stamped his feet to fend off the freezing cold that he doubted originated in
his feet. “No. I didn’t understand a single thing.”

“Not
anything? Not—”

“Nothing.
I understood nothing, Captain Sam.”

Even
as high up as Captain Sam was in the tree, the man’s disappointment felt like
radiant heat to Nicholas. It burned him with accusation and frustration for being
the vessel the aliens had chosen, and for being a faulty and ungrateful one.

“They
could’ve been tryin’ to impart the meaning of the universe,” Captain Sam said
in a rough voice. “Or the cure for cancer.”

“That’s
why I didn’t mention it again in any subsequent interviews. That kind of loss—I
didn’t want to speak of it ever again.” He swallowed, shuffled his feet. He
wished he hadn’t chosen to come here and yet a part of him was perversely glad
that he had. The bandage had been ripped off and now the wound would either
heal or become infected, but at least he would no longer have to hide it.

He
cleared his throat. “So now you know more than most people, Captain Sam. I hope
that brings you some satisfaction.”

“Not
hardly,” he thought he heard the bearded man mutter.

More
snow fell and Nicholas danced back. He raised his head to complain and saw that
Captain Sam was beginning to descend the tree.

When
Captain Sam was midway down the trunk, a gunshot echoed throughout the valley.
Up amid the pine needles, Captain Sam froze, his furry head twisting this way
and that like the S.E.T.I. radar dish.

“Probably
hunters,” Nicholas said when the man remained spooked after a minute had
passed.

“Maybe
not.”

Another
hawk of spit.

“You’d
best be gettin’ out of here, Trilby. We’ll talk another time. When I know we’re
alone.”

Nicholas
looked around himself with a frown. “The squirrels and deer don’t understand
English.”

“It’s
not the prey I’m worried about. Some men got a stake out here nearly as great
as mine. Say what you will ’bout me—I know I’m just a loony mountain man—but
some of the others out here, you’d better watch your back, is all I’m sayin.’”

“Do
you know who killed Rocky Johnson?”

Captain
Sam spat again, ignoring him. Nicholas abruptly lost his patience.

“You’re
wasting my time. You never had anything to tell me. What if I told you that I
think you may have had something to do with it?” Nicholas jabbed a finger up at
him. “You knew where Rocky’s watch was buried. Why? Because you killed him there?
My cabin was broken into but maybe you’d done it earlier in the day just to
ensure you could gain access. Maybe your intention had been to place the watch
in my home and call Canberry. A nice frame-up would rid you of your number one
competition for the aliens’ attention, wouldn’t it?”

The
reaction he’d hoped to stir up—panic or denial—never materialized. Instead,
Captain Sam issued a dismissive-sounding snort. “Sorry to tell you, Trilby, but
life ain’t that simple. That detective already asked me for my alibi and I’ll
tell it to you, too: I was talkin’ to some idiots on KPAH.”