It is infamy, Ajax. How have they defiled Caesar? We have not prayed over him or performed the rites, and now they say his body is gone. They bring shame on the Laos. Humiliation. What does Abba say?

Ajax remained still. Telemachos continued signing.

Some of the Laos believe Caesar was the Heliodromos. This will not sit well. Xerxes speaks of open defiance, that we should kill any of the alloioi we can reach.

Ajax watched the coded hand gestures out of the corner of his eye while he scrawled in the dirt of the activity yard. Next to him, Telemachos broke off the signing, rippling his colors, the cutaneous chromophores cycling through random shades in response to his emotional turmoil. To the observers behind the surveillance cameras, he would appear to be practicing his camouflage routines, but the rest of the grendels knew otherwise.

Events accelerated, and Ajax desperately needed guidance from Abba. With only parts of the plan firmly in place, and others he only guessed at, it was difficult to know how much to share, what decisions must be made, who their allies were. The rapidly declining health of their mother was another source of time pressure. Though he informed Abba, it didn’t seem to result in any discernible change in response. Were there other forces at work, unseen but moving powerfully? Perhaps Abba wasn’t in complete control of their fates.

Keeping both Surt and Telemachos focused on the plan, while also handling Xerxes’ unpredictable rage, tested his limits. He resolved to make the divergent demands of the grendel factions known to Abba. It was no longer possible to lead effectively without knowing how, and when, they would achieve their freedom.

Chapter 34

Michelle saw Arlo in a booth and he waved her over with a big smile.

“Hey, there. Nice place you picked. Seems a little fancy for a grad student.”

Arlo grinned. “C’mon, this is Rexburg. Even my paltry stipend goes a long way out here.”

Michelle placed her device discretely to the side so she could monitor it for a response from the Deputy. They ordered apps and beers, Michelle getting her usual single light beer to stay sharp.

“So, it turns out your friend Tiffany is a bit of a celebrity. She’s friends with people I know at Loyola. My buddies certainly knew her and remembered that night at Mother McGee’s.”

Michelle laughed, holding her hands to her mouth. “That is too funny. She’s quite a character.”

They dove into another round of ‘do you know?’ and established that her life in Oak Park had some overlap with his in Wilmette.

“So what do you do at Loyola?” Michelle asked, already knowing the answer from her quick background check of him.

“Computer science.”

“So why not University of Chicago? I bet you’re smart enough.”

He blushed and Michelle felt a twinge of regret at using her skills on this guileless nice guy.

“Money. My mom works for Loyola, and it’s closer to home, a bunch of stuff. That’s also why I’m out here. Helping out my uncle. I can keep doing most of my research remotely. It’s a lot of juggling, but they need a hand.”

Now she really felt bad. Other people have complicated family lives, too.

“Oh, of course. That makes perfect sense.”

“Is your dad Steven Shank, the mathematician?”

Michelle tried to conceal her surprise. Was, she thought, but didn’t say.

“Yes. You knew him?”

Arlo nodded. “His work. Everyone in my field does. His papers on information theory are pretty important.”

Michelle felt pride and blooming warm affection for this increasingly endearing boy.

The onion rings and nachos came and they ate, talking and laughing while eating. Michelle responded to something he said, spraying him with nacho crumbs, sending them into further fits of giggling.

Michelle saw the subtle flicker of a message popping up on her device and she reached over to turn it so she could read it. She also noticed Arlo watching.

“Something with your brother?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah, let me just see.” Michelle immediately regretted the fib, but her implacable curiosity compelled her. The Deputy wanted to talk before meeting. She replied yes.

“Anything wrong?”

“No, no, it’s just…” Her device trilled. “Sorry, I’ve got to take this.” She slid out of the booth and walked quickly to the front of the restaurant.

“Hello?”

“Uh, is this the reporter?”

“Is this Ben Davis?”

“Yes.”

“Hi, this is Michelle. Like I said in the texts, I got your information from Sheriff Spaulding,” Michelle fibbed. “Is this a good time to talk?”

“Uh, sure. You talked to Sheriff Spaulding?”

“Yes, he said you would be a good person to talk to. Is there somewhere I can meet you? I’m in Rexburg.”

They made plans to meet at a bar two blocks from the restaurant. She left enough time to finish dining with Arlo and still be able to work on the Deputy. It would be tight, but everything seemed to be falling into place.

She returned to the booth with Arlo.

“Everything okay?” he asked with genuine concern.

“Yeah, it was actually a work thing. It’s all good.” She picked up an onion ring and gave him a big smile. “So where were we?”

“Our wonderful hometown. Okay, some quick questions to see just what kind of Chicagoan you are. Ketchup?”

“Never.”

“Opinions about stuffed pizza?”

“Too touristy.”

“Ooh, I don’t know about that one. What about…”

Michelle’s mind drifted, thinking about what her strategy with Deputy would be, how she’d steer him, what other lines of inquiry she’d pursue…

“…and said he’d never been there. I said, how can you call yourself a local? That’s THE place to hang out. Do you guys go?”

Michelle snapped back. “What? Where?”

Arlo frowned. “South Street beach. In the summer. I was saying…”

Michelle shook her head. “I’m sorry. Yes, we hang there, but god it gets so crowded.”

“But that’s the fun of it! The people watching, the chaos…”

The spell was broken. Her mind went back to the Deputy, how she’d use what she knew about his legal issues, whether they’d seen the same things she did, whether they had any inkling she’d been out there, what other angles might be buried…

“…that brats are more a Wisconsin thing, and that Italian beef is really the only truly Chicago sandwich. Here’s another one – is a hot dog a sandwich? Good god do we argue about that one!” Arlo’s face fell when Michelle didn’t respond, staring off and distracted once again. “Listen, I better get going. I’ve got a work call I’ve got to do with my thesis advisor. We better get the check.”

Michelle snapped back to the conversation. “I’m sorry, I’ve got a work thing, too.”

Arlo nodded. “I understand, that’s cool. Hey, this was fun. If you’re up for it, I’d like to do it again.”

Michelle agreed, they paid up, and she watched him walk away, kicking herself once again for letting work complicate her personal life. He really was nice, and in other circumstances, he would be the exact kind of guy she’d like to spend time with and her friends would approve of. She walked down the street to her next rendezvous.

***

She spotted the deputy across the bar, sitting alone at a small table. Younger than Michelle, clean-cut, athletic. Solid color crew neck t-shirt tucked into faded, pressed jeans. Casual but neat, attentive to appearance, but not excessively. Scanning the room with the mildly predatory look of youth intensely interested in the opposite sex, heedless of how obvious his attention to the young women around him appeared. The kind of boy Michelle and her friends made sport of, fending off their clumsy advances in the Northside Chicago bars they frequented. Ordinarily off-putting, his eager interest was cute, and so easily manipulated. Michelle approached the table feeling like a lioness circling the kill, smiling at the irony of this role reversal from the situation with the anthropologist this morning. Except, she was just interested in information.

“Hi, are you Ben?” She brushed back a wisp of hair from her forehead. He looked up, cautious for an instant, then eyes briefly widening with interest, and he returned a small smile.

“Yeah, uh, Ms. Shank?” He clumsily made to stand up, bumping the table and sending water sloshing from the glass in front of him.

Michelle extended her hand, grinning. “Please, call me Michelle.” They shook hands briefly, and she took note of the calluses on his palms, the ropy muscles, and the bulging veins on his forearms. Weightlifter.

He fumbled with the napkin, sopping up water, stealing glances at her, a faint blush creeping into his features.

“The Chief, uh, said to give you whatever information you needed, but first I have to, um, check your, ah, you know, ID and stuff….” he stammered as he wiped up the spill, now struggling to only make eye contact. Michelle leaned forward, giving him a better angle, further flustering him.

“Of course. My credentials. Here.” She pulled her device out, tapped the screen, swiped through several images, then held it out to him.

“Just flick those. My driver’s license, that’s my CJD, and that one is my clearance.”

He glanced at them, obviously unfamiliar with their appearance and import, so she continued, taking the opportunity to lean in closer, briefly touching his arm.

“That one proves I’m a certified journalist, and that one says it’s okay to share privileged information with me. It’s basically the government saying I can be trusted with sensitive details of an investigation or any other information. If you ask me to not share stuff because of an investigation, it means you can trust me to keep it confidential.”

Unless I think otherwise.

They made small talk, Michelle gently extracting from him the details she already knew about his high school football career and time with the Sheriff’s office. He opened up about his success on the field and volunteered the shared background with the Sheriff and the past glory of Ricks College.

“Did you play college ball?” Michelle asked, brushing an invisible speck off his forearm, letting her fingers linger.

“I was recruited, but I ended up not going. Family stuff.”

She nodded. “Families come first, but they can be hard.”

He nodded. “You can say that again.”

“That’s one thing that I have to do as a journalist, when I get to know people for an article, a lot of times they share things that aren’t relevant to the story but I have to keep them confidential. People have to trust me so they can share what they know. That’s part of what all the licenses are about. Learning about family secrets and keeping them.” Then she steered him to the crime.

“So tell me about this murder. Is this unusual out here?”

Ben shrugged.

“Yes and no. We get murders, but not like this. Domestics, bar stuff, drugs. Usually it’s pretty obvious why it happened. This is kind of weird.”

“Why?”

“Not sure. Cyrus is kind of a nobody. Grouchy old guy, doesn’t really get along with anyone, but not so far as anyone would want to kill him. Well, until now at least.”

He smiled at his joke and Michelle reciprocated.

“And the house. Looked like someone broke in to steal something, but then he’s dead on the kitchen floor, shot in the head. No signs of struggle. Just seems weird to me.”

“Never seen anything like it, huh?” She noted the subtle flush in response to the implied flattery.

“Definitely not. This one’s different.”

She steered the conversation back to chatting, told him about her visit to the dunes, left out the part about the jerk attendant and Arlo, eased him into more stories about himself, found an excuse to trace a vein with her finger, got him talking about his workout.

“I can believe you spend that much time at the gym. You must live there!” She reached over and squeezed his bicep with a smile, letting her fingers linger just a few milliseconds and elicited the expected response.

This is too easy, she thought with a mixture of competitive glee and guilt. Then she came back to the murder.

“That is so interesting about how it looks like a robbery, but then it doesn’t. Nothing out there that gives any other indication about what was going on?”

He hesitated.

“I don’t think so. Vargas went through it pretty thoroughly.”

“But you didn’t see anything?”

“Uh, no, I don’t think so…”

She paused, then followed her intuition based on how pliable the deputy had become. If I can get him back out at the scene…. She gently pulled on her lip, drawing out the silence, then she looked up, eyes wide, mouth in a subtle pout.

“I’d really like to see for myself. Do you think we could go out there? You could show me around.” She finished with a small smile, head slightly tilted, eyebrows raised with just the right suggestion of ambiguity.

“Uh, sure.”

They finished their drinks, and shortly after were headed to Cyrus Link’s house, Michelle following him in her own car, pretending to not know the way.

Michelle followed Ben Davis into the house after donning the gloves he provided. He turned a light on in the living room.

“Don’t touch anything,” he cautioned.

Michelle nodded. “Where was the body?”

He gestured through the kitchen door, then flicked on the light and they stood in the doorway looking in. He pointed to the floor.

“He was right there. See the bullet holes?”

Michelle feigned interest in the blood smears.

“So why do you think he was killed?” Michelle asked.

“No idea. Robbery gone bad is usually how these things go, but we looked around and nothing appears to be missing. Someone was looking around, though.”

“Where?” They backed out, and walked around to the living room. He turned on another light.

“See how the desk is opened up, papers jumbled? Somebody was looking through there.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t have noticed that. You’re good at this,” Michelle lied. He flushed slightly at the flattery.

“You want to see upstairs?”

“Sure.”

He led her up the stairs and showed her the rooms, the obvious signs of search, but the equally obvious presence of various valuables, which should have been taken if it were a simple robbery. They went back downstairs. Michelle crossed the living room to the dining room and attempted to turn on a floor lamp without effect. She crossed over and hit a wall switch, illuminating the small dining room.

A single chair was still turned away like when she was there earlier, the only one not tucked under the table. Michelle stood in front of it, looking, then turned and surveyed the rest of the room. Ben Davis stood behind her, watching. Her eyes went back to the lamp, a tall stand-alone version, with a corroded brass base, similar to one they had when she was a little girl back in Chicago. Then she saw the cord, cut a few inches from the base. She knelt down next to it.

“That’s why it doesn’t work.” She looked up at Ben Davis, then back around the room. She stood and circled the table, then stopped, pointing into the corner.

“Look.”

He came around and saw the twisted cord, cut from the lamp, balled up on the floor. He looked at the cord, then back at the chair. They both walked around the table and stood in front of the chair. Without a word, he pointed, and Michelle saw the small spots of blood in the carpet.

“Shit.”

“What?” Michelle asked, feigning ignorance. Goddamit, how did I miss that? The light, it was different, and I didn’t have gloves. I didn’t flick the light switch. Goddamit.

She slipped off the gloves, balling them up in her left hand. She walked over to the lamp.

Ben Davis pulled out his device, ignoring her. “Sheriff? I’m out at Cyrus’ place. There’s a problem. There’s some other evidence here that I don’t think Vargas processed.” He paused to listen. “No, I only saw him in the kitchen. I’ll check, but I’m pretty sure all the specimens were just from the kitchen. We found some cord and blood stains in the dining room. Me and the reporter. She…..” He looked up and saw Michelle touching the lamp with her ungloved hand, turning the switch. He gestured frantically for her to get away from the lamp while he listened.

Michelle could hear a raised voice coming from the phone, and the blood drain from Ben Davis’ face. After a few winces he tried to interject.

“No sir, she asked to see the scene. I didn’t know… no, sir… we didn’t touch anything… wait, there is one thing… no, sir…no, sir…but, I… no, sir. I figured it was okay because it was already processed.” He winced again at more yelling. He noticed Michelle watching and turned away. She maintained a respectful distance. He paused again. “Yes sir. Will do. Okay.” He broke the call and turned to Michelle.

“We’ve got to go. They’re going to have to go through this place again, with a fine-tooth comb.”

“What do you mean?”

“Re-sample everything, for DNA.”

“To see who was here?”

Ben Davis nodded in response.

“Your DNA is going to be in here when they re-swab, especially on that lamp. They’ll want to talk to you. Let’s go, I need to get swab from you. There’s paperwork.”

***

Sheriff Spaulding rubbed his eyes.

What a fucking mess.

Without the autopsy results, they didn’t have a firm basis for characterizing Cyrus’ death as definitely murder. Without that, the evidence collection procedural screw up jeopardized the evidence and the case. Now this.

Why did it have to be Vargas? Short-timer, bad attitude, taking short cuts. He picked up his phone and dialed the Idaho State Police. After several brief conversations, he was connected to the Homicide Unit, Crime Scene Investigation.

“Yeah, the whole house. Looks like my guy missed some stuff. I’ll get the warrant. No, I don’t have the autopsy results yet, he just got down to Pocatello. I really appreciate it. Tonight would be fantastic. Oh. Okay, I guess tomorrow will have to do. Great, thanks. I’ll meet you out there.”

He hung up and called Ben Davis back, calmer now.

“Ben? Is the girl still there? Okay, listen, before you head home, pick up some surveillance sticks and set them up around Cyrus’ place. One on the house, one on the driveway out to the road. I just want to make sure no one else is getting in there…Yeah, I know…We’ll talk about it later… Okay… Thanks.”

Chapter 35