The Pandora Directive: A Tex Murphy Novel (26 page)

For the time being, I decided that the trail of my investigation led to the Cosmic Connection. Ellis was my only link to locating Elijah Witt. I wasn’t optimistic that Ellis could help with finding out who’d stolen his box, but maybe Regan had gotten some information regarding Witt. I picked up the phone and called her hotel. She wasn’t in. Feeling impatient, I decided to pay Ellis a visit and beat Witt’s address out of him if I had to.

The door to the Cosmic Connection was locked, and the Closed sign was out. I peered into the darkness, trying to see if Ellis’s was around. The place appeared to be deserted. I knocked on the door several times, but there was no answer. I checked the lock, but it was a dead bolt, shut tighter than Rook’s wallet.

A narrow alley ran down the right side of the shop. I followed it to the end. There was no back door on this side of the building. I started back toward the front when I noticed a small piece of rain-stained plywood crate on the ground, set against the side of the building. Just on the off chance, I knelt down and pushed it aside. A small, cracked window looked big enough for me to squeeze through, though I’d have to take off my fedora. It was a big price to pay, but this was a big job.

After a few minutes of trying to pry the window open, I resorted to brute force and kicked it in unceremoniously. Managing to climb through without tearing my overcoat, I found myself in the bowels of the Cosmic Connection. With nothing more than five-second intervals of match light and my innate sense of direction, I stumbled around the dark basement until I found a light switch. Shadows sprang up around me, and I found myself amid a jungle of cardboard boxes, piles of books, and a plethora of indescribably odd objects. To my right was a rickety set of stairs leading up to the main floor. I reached the top and, throwing open the basement door, stepped in to Ellis’s shop.

The smell of incense was much less noxious than it had been before. Ellis wasn’t here, and my guess was that he hadn’t been for awhile. But I was wrong.

As I looked around, I caught sight of something behind the counter. As I approached, I saw the bottoms of a pair of old sneakers. Leaning over the counter, I looked straight into the glazed, unseeing eyes of Archie Ellis. The hole in his head was new. A pool of congealed blood had gelled around him. He looked like an overgrown kindergartener taking a nap on a giant raspberry fruit roll-up.

Life was getting cheaper by the minute, and I felt like the Grim Reaper’s calling card. I lit a smoke. Poor bastard. I checked around. Whoever had killed him, it hadn’t been a burglar. Who was I kidding? He’d gotten waxed on my account. He wasn’t worth killing for any other reason. Malloy, I could understand, but not Ellis. Things were coming to a head. Someone was going around, tying up loose ends, maybe trying to find the box Ellis no longer had. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen soon. I needed to find Witt.

I made a systematic search of the Cosmic Connection. I don’t know how long Ellis had run his shop, but he’d collected a few lifetime’s worth of paraphernalia. One entire section of the store was piled high with newspaper articles, Magazine clippings, and news-wire photographs. Several file cabinets were stuffed full of correspondence. There were racks of home videos, undoubtedly of UFO sightings, and an impressive library of laser disks, dealing with all forms of paranormal subject matter. Ellis had apparently stashed things in one spot until there was no room left, then moved to another section of the building.

After some time, I found the most recent dumping ground. Rooting through the stacks of paper, I found what I was looking for: a scrap of paper with the name J.I. Thelwait, Witt’s alias, written on it. There was also an incomplete mailing address: PO Box 24, Richfield. The state and zip code had fought a battle with a coffee stain and lost. They were smeared to the point of illegibility. But at least I had an address. Now I just needed to find out where it was.

I seemed to remember Ellis saying something about Witt retiring to a place in the Northwest. He could have been trying to throw me off, but it was a good place to start. There was a vid-phone on the counter, sitting on top of a vid-phone directory. I opened the directory and found the page with the area-code listings. Starting with one of Washington state’s four codes, I dialled 1-509-555-1212. The operator’s voice came on and asked for a city. I said Richfield and asked for the number of J.I. Thelwait. The operator told me that Richfield was in area code 206. The 206 operator informed me that there was no one by that name listed. I asked him to check Elijah Witt. No luck.

In Oregon, there was no city named Richfield. California had a Richfield, but no Elijah Witt or J.I. Thelwait. I resorted to checking the other Western states. The Richfields in Nevada, Utah, and Idaho didn’t pan out. Montana, New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona had no Richfields. I wasn’t too keen on trying every state in the country. Could Ellis have meant western Canada? Maybe Witt was across the border. I dialled the number for Canadian information. There was, indeed, an Elijah Witt in Richfield, British Columbia, but his number and address were unlisted. I didn’t care. Just like the Mounties, I had enough to get my man.

I called the police from the vid-phone at the Cosmic Connection, leaving an anonymous message about Ellis’s body. His murder was weighing heavily on me, and there was nothing I wanted to do more than find out who’d blasted him. I wondered if Regan had gotten to him before the bullet. An unsettling thought occurred to me. No, I couldn’t believe that. Ellis wasn’t the first person to die in this chain of events and probably wouldn’t be the last.

I flew back to my office. It was late, and I figured I’d be better off with some sleep and a fresh start. I picked up some Chinese food on the way. When I got home, there was a message on my answering machine. I pushed the playback button and slumped into my chair with a box of Pan-fried noodles. Chelsea’s face appeared on the screen.

“Hey, handsome. How come you’re never there when I call? You’re not actually working, are you? Well, I just wanted to tell you that Phoenix is fun, but I miss home. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I’ll be back soon. I’ll buy you a drink, and we’ll compare scars. So, I guess that’s it. Bye!”

A slight twinge appeared in my stomach. For the first time in my adult life, the sensation had to do with romance, and not with fear, booze, or indigestion. With some irritation, I realised that I missed her. I’d been so busy the past couple days, I hadn’t had time to think about anything so trivial as women, but now that I thought about it, I was a little lonely. I took a hot shower and missed Chelsee even more.

As I lay in bed, floating into the Freudian abyss, I saw Regan and Chelsea, standing like sentinels in a vast desert landscape. Regan’s auburn hair nestled around her flawless face, her eyes deep and dark, her slender arms extending toward me. Chelsea was like the sun, golden and smiling, her hands resting on her narrow hips. Then, like wraiths emerging from the mist, faces appeared behind Regan. First Fitzpatrick, then Malloy, then Ellis. With a feeling of regret welling up inside me, I turned back to Chelsea, and she was alone. Her warmth reached out to me, and I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, I was lying on a beach. My grandmother was blocking the sun, lecturing me on drinking straight out of the milk jug. I’d lost my dog, and Paul McCartney appeared, wearing a sombrero over a sequinned gown with lavender pumps, trying to sell me life insurance. The pan-fried noodles had taken over.

The flight to British Columbia the next day was nothing if false scenic. The Great North West was still one of the least developed areas in the country. A set the speeder on autopilot and tried to think for brilliant plan that would get me into Elijah Witt stronghold. Everything I’d heard about the man indicated that he was a recluse of titanic proportions. They also had an inkling that he was probably on the upside of well-2-2. My experience in the PRI business had taught me the money plus reclusive must generally resulted in expensive alarm systems and nearly impenetrable security.

Not that I didn’t enjoy a challenge. But something told me that I’d have to need wait head on. Now I just had to come up with an utterly convincing, possibly endearing life. By the time I reached rich field, I had a few mediocre ideas, but nothing I felt particularly comfortable with.

A sign at the City limits probably welcomed me into the warm and indus-trious arms of 18,611 played-wearing lumberjacks. The hamlet of rich field was a 3-dimensional postcard, complete with a pint-size main street and quaint shops with names like mossy oaks.

Wits address was a post office box, which wasn’t going to do me any good. His house was somewhere in the vicinity, but I wasn’t about to canvass the entire town. Maybe if I knew which made the had he lived in, I could fall back on my old missionary to skies. Unfortunately, I’d left my pamphlets and glassy eyed look at back at the office. I’d have to locate wits place some other way.

I’ve never lived in a small town, but it was enough re-runs of the Andy Griffith Show to win it. And, as any experienced watcher of the show knows, anything worth hearing passes through the town barber shop. I glanced into my rear-view mirror and decided I needed a trim anyway. As I flew in slowly over Main Street, a revolving red and white striped barber poll stood out like a lighthouse beacon in front of a tiny building on the far end of the street. The sign above the door said it all: Fred’s.

I parked my speeder and climbed out. A group of children stood at a safe distance, the faces looking as though they’d just seen Godzilla tromping over a nearby hill. At first, I thought they might be awestruck by my fedora, seeing as how it was a hand with no ear flaps. On further consideration, however, I realise that there were no other speeders on the street. All the vehicles were the old fashioned earthbound types. As far as the kids knew, I wasn’t terrible alien, come to have my hair cut before destroying the town and abducting them to take back my home planet.

A bell tinkled as I opened the door. Entering Fred’s barbershop was like entering a Norman Rockwell hologram. A fiftyish, bespectacled gentleman, whom I took to be Fred, was meticulously trimming the borders of an elderly man’s bald spot. Fred was sporting a standard issue white jacket over a white shirt and a tie with a knot the size of an eight ball. His hair was lacquered back with a hearty helping of Brylcreem, and his pencil-thin moustache was trimmed to a fault.

Besides Fred and the gent in the chair, two ancient checker players were plying their trade in the corner, and a cigar-smoking fat man was reading Hunter’s Weekly. A younger man sat with a nervous-looking little boy, who was probably being initiated into the Fellowship of the Barbershop Lodge.

I took a seat in the corner, removing my hat and smiling in a neighbourly fashion at the thirteen eyes watching my every move. One of the checker players wore an eye patch. Fred was the first to lose interest and return to his client. The only sounds in the place were the snipping of scissors and the plunking of checkers. My smile hadn’t lost any of its lustre, but it didn’t seem to be working. I decided to make the first move. “This sure is a beautiful town.”

The silence in the barbershop was as thick as the goo in Fred’s hair. And after what seemed to me to be an awkward silence, Fred spoke without looking up. “New around here, aren’t ya?”

“Yeah. This is my first time in Richfield. I’m from San Francisco.”

“Come all the way up here for a trim?”

I laughed, probably a little too loudly. “No. Just came up to visit a friend of mine.”

“Really? Who’s that?”

“Elijah Witt.”

Fred stopped snipping. Everyone in the room was looking at each other, like they were trying to figure out who’d just made that awful smell. Apparently, I’d tripped a local land mine. Fred was a cool customer. After a slight hesitation, he resumed snipping. “So, how do you know Mr Witt?”

This seemed like a good time to test my first falsehood. “I was one of his students at Berkeley. Thought I’d pay him a visit, since I was in the area. Unfortunately, I’ve never been here before. I’m not sure how to find him.”

The fat cigar smoker gave me a suspicious leer. “Seems kinda dumb to come for a visit when you ain’t got the address. How’d that happen?”

My brain was clicking like lobster claws. “Well, I wanted to surprise him. We haven’t seen each other for at least fifteen years.”

The fat man turned to Fred. “I don’t know about this guy. Somethin’ don’t seem right about him.”

“Don’t be unneighbourly, Stan. He’s just not from around here, that’s all.” Fred looked up at me. “Ain’t that right, Mr — “

“Murphy. Jake Murphy. Yeah, I’m afraid I stick out like a bone spur around here.”

“Got that right.” the words were mumbled from the direction of the checker game. I seemed to have worn out my unwelcome. I decided to leave before these hicks started playing “Duelling Banjos” and making pig sounds.

“Well, I’ll come back later when you’re not so busy.” there was no response. My standard Murphy charm had apparently deserted me. I needed a stiff drink and time to compose myself. Fred’s Barber Shop was nothing like the one Andy Taylor went to.

There was a bar across the street called the Juniper Saloon. I lit a cigarette and crossed the street, being careful not to get hit by one of the four-wheeled relics passing by. I walked in and took a seat at the bar. The place must have gotten more through-traffic than the barber shop. The bartender was the first person in Richfield who didn’t look at me as though my face were covered with festering boils. I ordered bourbon straight up. The bartender confirmed my order appreciatively, as though he expected me to ask for a beer.

I drained the JD and ordered another. I’d tipped the Bartender just enough to leave me alone and yet not so much that he’d feel obligated to make cardboard conversation. I was just finishing a third helping when someone slid onto the bar stool beside me. The young man from the barbershop gave me a nod and waved off the bartender. He’d come in to see me, not to have a drink. With some trepidation, he turned and spoke. “Sorry about what happened back there. Not everyone around here is so narrow.”