1

Ned Stevenson woke up to the Post on his front step. He wasn’t on duty on Sundays, and like the weekend regulars, the habit was always a little local news with the coffee. So, like the rest of Reedy Creek, he read Cole Moore’s short exposé of Robert Wilson’s car crash cum obituary with the sort of fascinated interconnectivity four boys who usually did not show much curiosity to the news beyond the sports page would share.

2

Car Collision Claims Life of One Man

Cole Moore

Reedy Creek-- Police were called to Woodvine in south Reedy Creek on Saturday morning to discover the grisly remains of what on scene officer Andrew Napolitano, Sheriff of the RCPD, is calling an “unfortunate accident,” the result of a motorist swerving to avoid, and successfully so, what officials are guessing must have been stray wildlife. The Post was given permission as of print to release the name of the driver, Robert Wilson, who died on the scene.

Mr Wilson was a beloved figure and one of the founding investors of Main Street’s Mr Sub eatery, who also worked on the books for the Liquor Depot and Hindsight Books & Curios as a consulting accountant.

What one hopes may come of this is a local campaign to encourage the use of seatbelts. This summer has seen three single car collisions, all the effect of Reedy Creek’s proximity to undeveloped nature and its resulting wildlife. In early June, Colin Perkins was discovered outside his vehicle following impact with a deer, also found on the scene. And in July, investigators concluded that due to the burned rubber tracks on the 34, showing brakes triggered and a resulting loss of control, waitress Veronica Hedges was declared dead on arrival despite efforts by paramedics to resuscitate her. No wildlife was found on the scene, but officials assume Ms Hedges saw the alleged animal too late before she could safely move aside, forcing her car to turn over and settle on its roof in the ditch.

Memorial services are still being determined for Mr Wilson as next of kin are notified.

3

That’s it? That’s all they’re gonna give the guy? He wasn’t sure how much farther in depth writers went with small local stories, especially when the bulk of the paper was reserved for AP pieces when fluff articles were few and far between. But he’d been there. And he’d seen the carnage.

You barely slept.

That wasn’t because of Wilson. Or only because of him. No, the moment he did find that camera in his mom’s room, those endless ideas started to formulate that would make sense of invading the privacy of a single lady. Some pervert could have been watching her. He lay in bed with his eyes opened, staring at the ceiling. For some time Randy played his stupid music. And then when it was quiet he waited for the front door to open. But it didn’t. Not while he was awake.

He looked at the comics page when something struck him.

Colin Perkins. He knew the name. He vaguely remembered the hoopla surrounding the poor guy’s death, especially since he’d heard rumors the man’s head popped off when he went through the windshield. He wasn’t sure what he could believe. But he recalled something his mom said when she got the news. It wasn’t just the sort of passive comment you forgot, because she looked at that story in the Post as if encumbered by something far more intimate than black and white newsprint and a dodgy photograph of the scene. “Well, don’t I feel like a selfish bitch. That’s why he didn’t call.”

Croak’s mom dated the guy. Dated Colin. More than once if she was willing to fess up that she’d wanted to hear from the guy. Because he’d seen the door open most Saturday nights and it was never the same fellow. Always just a nice gesture in loafers handing over a gas station bouquet. He sometimes worried she would make her way through Reedy Creek’s singles so fast they’d have to pick up and move again. She’s lonely. He would not venture to guess what that might mean, but he knew she liked the company. He knew she liked to be away from home if only because Randy made things so damned difficult.

But Colin Perkins. Yes. It was a different face every Saturday night. Almost. A few times it was the same. He remembered that. Because he remembered meeting Colin Perkins more than once. He remembered the guy with the short hair, receding some at the temples where the foyer light reflected; he remembered wondering when the guy would be fully bald, or if he’d grow what hair he did have long enough to comb over any of that distracting scalp. He remembered thinking the guy was kind, that he offered his hand in formal salutation, his grip quite strong, and he remembered Randy pissing on the first batch of flowers their mom had left in a vase at the front. Randy had taken them right out of the glassware, thrown them on the lawn and whipped out his dick with a hoarse laugh. Croak put them in the garbage after, and when his mom did ask where they went, he lied and said the vase fell over. “What does it matter? The prick won’t be back. They want one thing. One thing. And she gives it to them all.” Croak didn’t quite know what that one thing was, but he was glad Randy was wrong because Colin did show up again, a new batch of flowers in hand. These did remain for some time in the foyer until the petals wilted. He’d learned not to glob onto any one of those guys at the door. Never were they asked to come in. Never were they there on Sunday morning. He wasn’t stupid enough to be looking for a father in any of them. But maybe, just maybe, he hoped one of them might become regular enough to break the front threshold and have a beer on the couch while Croak watched the game. Is that what you hoped for with Colin Perkins?

Maybe then he did. Until he saw Colin again. Jabbing a needle in his arm after having tied off his bicep with his shoelaces to get really veiny.

4

Pug couldn’t sleep. He wanted to think it was just the dream. The one dream that just would not go away. The seeds of his stories often started that way. Like roots finding some hold in subconscious thought. But he dreamed of an old man. He wouldn’t tell Adam, so the two would never share the kind of déjà vu that would suggest some sort of commonality in their thoughts, but he dreamed of a man in a fedora who’d put cameras in homes not just to spy, but to sell secrets. First you’d call his bluff, because he’d come to you, he’d come and make heavy claims. Maybe say you were snortin’ what grampa calls the Nose Candy, and if you just scoffed when he asked what that sort of secret was worth to you, he’d find the next highest bidder and say, I gave you a chance. He’d wake up in a sweat and fall asleep again and see the same thing. The man with the videotapes. The man with your secrets for sale. And his eyes were cold and empty, because no man in such a market could qualify for the same moral foundation upon which Pug’s own compass was pivoted. No way.

No, the reason he couldn’t sleep was Chels.

He woke up at around midnight to her yakking at the foot of his bed. For some time, as he rubbed her belly, it was only the steady, throaty gasping of one at a loss for breath. And when she did finally grow rigid and retch, he watched the ropy vomit splatter on his discarded jeans that he merely folded up and threw in a trash bag.

“You okay, girl?”

She only looked at him with pensive eyes. The eyes of a puppy so unaware and scared of what was happening. He felt for her. Because he was in the same boat. He’d taken her downstairs, careful not to wake his sisters or parents. He got her a bowl of fresh water and she only prodded her nose at it. Her breathing was quick. He found himself at the dinner table, Chels at his heel, jotting down a few notes. When he did look down at what he’d written it was only the mindless recall of his dream. Of the man in the fedora and the gunnysack of videos. Some with his parents. Because there was a camera just above their bed. You ever want to be in a porno? Or is that against your religion? I know you’re Mormon. And I know about the tapes you have in your closet, Mr Nelson. Does that mean you wouldn’t mind having your own sex tapes in a stranger’s closet, or would you like to keep that part of your life private? He wanted to be sick just thinking about it.

When Chels finally closed her eyes he carried her back upstairs with him and fell asleep. To dream. Only to be woken up twice more by his dog as she vomited.

“Oh Lord, get her outside, get her outside—”

Pug was snapped awake. He was sitting at the table. It was morning. He’d absentmindedly made his way to the table, where his mother had set a bowl of Lucky Charms, and he’d already starting parsing out the marshmallows to make the last few bites the best. The Post was in front of him. The story about Robert Wilson. But he’d spaced out. He wanted to think it was exhaustion, but a bigger part was how weighed down he was by the notion that somebody could be conceivably watching all of this right now. Somebody could be looking for those few acts or secrets that might best serve the sort of negotiable money that could leave his parents penniless but with their reputations intact.

“Oh gross, and all over the carpet!”

Wendy had already scooped up Chels and had raced her to the backdoor. She lurched onto the back deck and finished retching on the peeling slats, looking up at Wendy with remorse.

“Did it get on me?” Wendy asked.

She was jumping up and down, as most girls were wont to do, flinging around her hands as if in the dainty expression of one entirely grossed out.

“You’re fine. Get inside and wash your hands.” Pug’s mother went outside and got down on her knees. She wasn’t as inclined to have a dog as Pug had hoped, but she’d grown to tolerate Chelsey. “She’s your responsibility, Horace. That means feeding and walking. Your sisters will help. But you begged for a dog. And sometimes a woman likes quiet.” So she opted for a dog over Pug’s insistent pestering, a tactic he’d learned over time that worked quite well. It got him a Nintendo. And then it got him a dog. Her maternal instinct kicked in here and she took Chels in her arms and rubbed her belly, taking a washcloth to wipe away the froth from her wet lips.

“Horace, grab some dirty towels and the mop. We’ll have to wipe away the heavy stuff and make sure it doesn’t seep into the underlay.”

Pug obeyed. That part of him that had gone under, that had indifferently spooned cereal and separated the sugary goodness to the side, pulled him back from the sort of boyhood slumber meant to revivify a kid before he ran out for another go at street hockey or whatever. He went to the laundry room and pulled out a wad of old towels, some of them still wet, and went over to the mess on the carpet. What’s that…three times last night? I think? And once more this morning. Is that right? Can dogs get the 24-hour flu?

He wasn’t sure. Another thought was that she might have eaten something bad. And that thought carried him to the farmhouse, and the regret that he’d listened to Adam even if it meant an early warning before Lazarus caught them snooping. What if she’d gotten some of the crow in her mouth? What if she tried a taste? Maybe that’s what’s got her stomach in knots. All plausible, he figured, and if true, maybe all it meant was a few turns of the gut before everything was all better.

He sopped up the puke; it looked the same as the stuff from the night. Ropy curds.

“Is she alright?” Angela asked. She was wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt, just long enough so that the hem covered her knees. It was one of their dad’s old pass-me-downs, something vintage the girls thought was cool.

“Yes, she’s fine,” Pug’s mom intoned, still holding the spaniel. “Probably ate something that’s not agreeing with her. We’ll monitor her for the rest of the day. But her breathing’s better.”

“Oh man. Big Wilson died yesterday,” Ange said. She saw the paper sitting on the table next to Pug’s bowl.

Right. The obit. He remembered getting the paper off the front step before his father could, wanting to see what the Post said about the guy. “You knew him?” He looked up from his perch on the floor; he’d folded another towel in half and his mother picked them up, probably to unload their contents into a garbage bag. Chels had already lumbered against his side and kneeled looking up at him.

“Used to come in and get dirty movies. He was pretty open about it too.” It was almost like a fond memory. She looked at the photo on the front page and shuddered. “I always wondered if the guy was married. Had kids. Guess not.”

Well, I saw him. Saw his dead body. His glazed eyes looked at me. And guess what. We’ve got tapes of him, too. Tapes of him snorting the white stuff and dancing in front of a mirror. Probably some tapes of him with the dirty movies as well. And a horrible thought struck him: what if Adam had more in his bag? More they hadn’t yet watched? More with your parents?

He stroked Chelsey’s head and watched his mother. “He could have used the church; the community we’re a part of would have made quick work of that sort of reliance.”

“Whatever mom,” Ange said. Pug just thought it was funny she’d consider his affinity for pornography a sort of perverse reliance when he knew what was in her closet.

“Scoff all you want, Angela. But the values that have made you—all of us—upstanding weren’t automatic. They were earned through perseverance.”

Ange looked at Wendy and rolled her eyes. Pug wouldn’t argue the church’s merits. It was incumbent upon him as a kid to question all sorts of authority. And that he would do. But for kids, the church was just a nonsensical waste of an otherwise perfectly good weekend day. It had nothing to do with doctrine.

There was a knock on the door. Chels yipped twice and growled.

“Horace, it’s for you,” Wendy called.

It was Croak.

“You okay? You look like you’ve seen a fat dude’s ghost?”

“Been a long night. Plus Chels is sick.” He looked down and realized he was wearing his CTR ring. He slid it off and stuck it in his pocket before Cory could get off a jab or two.

“Yeah. Me too. Bad dreams. You gotta get ready. Adam wants to meet.”

“Dude, it’s Sunday,” Pug said.

“Yeah, usually follows Saturday.”

“I’ve got church.”

“It will be quick. This is important, Pug. And you know it too.” That was no lie. “I’ll wait outside. Make something up.”

Pug was the storyteller. So he’d have to do his best. Because Croak was right. This was important.

5

Ned Stevenson was at the backdoor. He’d parked a block down and wasn’t inconspicuous enough to alert anybody to his presence, because it was the guy wearing all black who didn’t want to be seen that usually was. No. He belonged in this neighborhood. Just out for a stroll. Maybe he even rented here. He’d opened the back gate without looking around, without the paranoia of one sticking to the shadows, and he walked through the backyard, the grass left long for most of the summer, dandelions blossoming in plentiful rows against the shed and fence. He knocked once.

The backdoor opened.

“You said a lot by writing very little,” he said as he stepped inside. The man in the house was wearing glasses. They were perched at the end of his nose, like some of the old teachers Ned remembered. He hated the look and thought to say something but noticed the earnestness in the man’s eyes.

“Small town journalism,” Cole Moore said. “The basics and then a little addendum to think about. Maybe I’ve just sold the next mayoral platform. If the asshole even considers shedding some of that corn money lining his pockets to re-visit the crumbling infrastructure of this little science experiment.”

The inside of the house was dim. The curtains were closed. The lights were off except for in the kitchen, which were on dimmers and hummed at a low wattage. There were stacked papers on the countertop where one would usually keep bowls of fruit or coffee. And on the far wall in the nook, a large corkboard hung upon which several articles, photographs, and papers with nearly illegible handwriting were tacked, some connected by different shades of yarn. Like something in a detective’s office.

“You sort of inferred the three accidents were connected.”

“But not for the right reason.”

Cole pushed his glasses back. He was a good-looking guy. He was in his early thirties. Ned was the type who could be honest with himself; he’d gone through school dating girls. And he enjoyed the hell out of it. He’d envisioned because of his stereotypical masculinity, learning about cars and then joining the force, that by virtue of such choices the rest would fall like dominoes. But there was something about Cole. Something he couldn’t quite register beyond the pragmatism of friendship, because the guy was convincing enough to have him play some sort of turnkey when it was required of him. Like yesterday.

Cole walked to the window. He’d already processed a stack of photos. They were sitting on the table next to some notes. A copy of the Post was sitting next to them, the image of the accident cut out leaving only the by-line beneath. There was a camera propped on a tri-fold. A Chinon CP9-AF. Something above Ned’s paygrade. But Cole wasn’t just a small town newsie, or Ned wouldn’t be in his employ. As long as a few bills were passed his way for simple tasks, like calling attention to the sheared brakes yesterday, and getting under Andy’s skin to top it off, he’d toe the line of the law in order to unearth whatever dastardly secrets were under the surface. Plus he liked being with Cole. Liked his company. His voice.

The corkboard detailed the many deaths reported in Reedy Creek. That much was obvious. The whys a little less so. There were three single car collisions. Each of these, including for today’s paper, were connected by yellow yarn. There were copies of official medical records. Ned had helped procure Colin Perkins’ MRI. Sometimes all it took was flashing a badge, a quick smile and wink at the nurse, and the rest fell into place with the aplomb of a well-planned ground assault. He looked at the tail end of the yarn and found a picture of Veronica Hedges, the attractive waitress whose car rolled on the 34. Her eyes were black and white newsprint, but Ned remembered they were a lucid blue, framed so nicely by brown hair making the combination somewhat exotic. In spite of the blood on her forehead and bits of glass dotting her skull. He wondered if when the car rolled the first thought that had come to her mind was the obvious irony that this would be the end, and not what the good doctor proffered when he found the metastatic breast cancer that had already transposed to her bones.

The photographs on the table, already developed, were of an old man in a wheelchair. The pictures were taken from the camera at the window, and had Ned opened the drapes, would have seen the same vantage point of the bungalow next door.

“Is there any sort of pattern to how it’s done?” Ned asked, looking at the camera and then back to the pictures. In one the old man is sitting in thought. In another he is being pushed in his wheelchair along a walkway by a thicket of trees. The man pushing him is in mid-conversation. Ned knew the older guy pushing the chair. His picture was on the corkboard as well. Cole called the man in the wheelchair the Saudi. “Car crash. Accidental overdose.”

“Depends on the circumstance, I think.”

“And Wilson?”

Cole looked at Ned as he went through a sheaf of papers.

“I mean, if Perkins and Veronica…if they had cancer, what did Wilson have?”

“He wasn’t wearing his seatbelt,” Cole mused. “I highly doubt it would have fit around him had he tried to clasp it. You saw the tits on him. I know the medical examiner had some trouble getting the body on a gurney, and I know the autopsy would have involved a few jokes about slicing into batter. Because a diet high on cholesterol is hard on the heart, so Wilson’s records aren’t of a present calamity but of a long-term prospect.”

Ned cocked his eye.

“Coronary heart disease,” Cole said. “A by-product of saturated fat turning the guy’s arteries to plaque.”

“So there wasn’t a confirmed prognosis?”

“Not on paper. Just statistics.”

“Jesus.” He shuddered. He remembered the clean cut on the brake line. Even if the guy had an agreeable braking system, the deferred momentum may have still shoved his heft into the steering column. Might have suffered a few broken ribs. But the car would have hit the curb and that would have been the end of it. A quick trip to the ER in Davenport. Or maybe an X-Ray at the Clinic with Dr Serkis. Andy was quick to sweep your observation under the rug. “And you think they’re doing this?”

“I do. I think the E10 council’s been behind almost every death in the Creek since I followed Paul Holdren here.”

Paul Holdren. The man in the picture with the Saudi.

6

“You all found some?”

The three nodded their heads. It was insane to consider. Even crazier to think of the implications. And he knew they had.

“And you didn’t find any?”

Adam looked at Danny. They’d had this conversation already. But talking over the phone was different than giving the news in person. Because the eyes said it all.

“Cause your dad’s on the council?” Croak asked.

Adam didn’t know. Could have been. They were sitting in the bleachers at the field. The diamond was empty. He wasn’t sure if the older kids would show up for a pick-up game, but he knew they couldn’t go to Fenway today. Not after what his father had said. He figured if the Sheriff spotted them at Wilson’s crash, then the man had eyes on the boys. The grass was nicely mown and the smell was fresh out here; landscapers were getting the place ready for school, and even the shale had the dressed polish of having been graded by the volunteer who tromped the baselines dragging a chunk of chainlink fence.

This was about cameras. Once you knew about them, you saw them everywhere.

“There were ten or twelve lined evenly along the street as I rode my bike here,” the Jew said.

“We saw some too,” Pug added.

Adam even noticed cameras on the light posts on either sides of the field. Black lenses that now in the morning light were just beading opals, similar to the convexed sodium-arcs above.

Anger would turn to paranoia throughout the night, and he knew his chums would have some good qualms lined up this morning, so he made sure they could meet. Not just to air some dirty laundry but to figure out a plan of action. That’s mostly what he’d thought about last night, and may have just cracked the code. But it would require some feedback.

“This all invites the obvious question.”

“Who’s doing this?” the Jew said. There was anger and grit in his tone.

“And why?” Croak added. “I mean, if there’s cameras outside...even here, I don’t think I found one in my mom’s room just cause a lonely guy is fiddling with himself. I thought so at first. I was pissed at first. And maybe if there is some truth to it, that’s not the only reason.”

“If that’s happening at all,” Danny said, “I want to stop it. I don’t know about you guys, but I’d rather not think about some sick asshole jerking off while my mom is undressing. Even if it’s some by-product of whatever else is going on here. I even thought about putting tape over the lens...”

“Don’t do that,” Adam blurted.

“Says the guy without any cameras at his place.”

“That doesn’t matter. If we’re all in on this and we’ve discovered something we should not have, and I know we have...you all know we have...we can’t let whoever’s watching know we know.” Danny looked down at his hands, both balled on his lap, and Adam knew he had the Jew hook, line, and sinker. They couldn’t hand out some tell. Not if they wanted to dig further. Especially if they didn’t want to get caught by the pervert they hoped to expose. “Think about it: we found a box of tapes. Those tapes are of two different guys. And they’re doing drugs.”

“You think this is like an illegal surveillance op by the cops?” Croak asked.

“In Reedy Creek? Doubtful,” the Jew said, true New York pride showing through the statement with brash bravado.

“Well, the other guy we saw on tape...I knew him. His face at least. My mom goes on a lot of dates. Shitty thing about a single parent. My brother calls her the Human Rolodex.”

Danny chuckled.

“Point is, the guy in the tape, the guy with the needle in his arm, his name’s Colin Perkins.”

“Wait. His name was in Wilson’s obit.”

“Yeah. He was in a car crash earlier this summer. Hit a deer or something.”

“Jesus,” Danny said.

“Jesus is right. And I met him. Twice. He took my mom out twice. When he didn’t return, it was because he fucking died.”

“The same way as Wilson,” Pug added. “And we have tapes of both.”

Adam nodded. “If some guy’s diddling his boy parts watching your parents mingle, he didn’t, or they didn’t put the cameras inside the master bedrooms just to watch ol’ Nelson and Nelson wrestle,” he nudged Pug and the boy smiled indifferently. Was this the time for jokes? Maybe, maybe not. But Adam thought they helped. “The cameras are there to catch a Wilson or a...Perkins with a needle in his arm.”

“Why?” Danny asked.

And that’s where it stalled. The momentum of thought. Just as easily as accusations and reasoning could be surmised by certain connections, that ball of tissue scarred the moment one asked the question why.

Pug cleared his throat. He looked at each of the boys sitting on the bleachers. Sunday morning was pretty quiet in Reedy Creek. Soon those churchgoers would make their way to chapel. Eat of Christ’s body and drink of His blood. But Main Street was mostly dead. “How much is your privacy worth to you?”

“Pug?” Croak asked.

“I mean, what if somebody knew your secrets...had proof you did something you didn’t want people to know you do. How much would you pay somebody to make sure your secrets stayed secret?”

“Like surveillance to blackmail adults?” The inflection in Croak’s voice was palpable.

“Pug, I’m from Brooklyn. If that sort of network was real, I’m sure the first place they’d try it is Tammany on East 14th.”

“It’s a theory.”

“Yeah, but misplaced.”

“Is it? We have two guys on tape doing drugs, Danny. And both of them are dead now.”

Adam nodded. “We’re asking the right questions. But where did we find these tapes?”

Nobody said anything because the answer was obvious. And saying so would only remind them of their second trip to the hellhole where they’d stumbled on the second graveyard.

“We found them in a box in front of a steel door in a farmhouse. That means the door’s fire-rated. New. It was added later, like the windows. Like the cameras with the cut cords where somebody’s doing something he doesn’t want record of.”

“The mystery takes us to the other side of the door,” Danny said, and Croak added “there it is,” in his best Vin Scully.

Adam looked at the cameras on the posts; he looked at the dugouts and the crisp grass lines in the outfield where he hoped he’d be playing next spring on the varsity squad. The cameras in the houses, those were discreet invasions. That’s why they were cleverly concealed in the ceiling, in the darkest corners. But out on the street, in the stores, they were hardwired and official. Which meant the system itself was possibly on the level. You didn’t have any in your house. Grampa said it would be odd if you did. Cameras on the street are official. In the bedroom they’re perverted. His father was pretty adamant he stay away from Fenway. He said it was because of bears, and for that one moment he’d attempted a lone fatherly admonition. But that was bullshit. The man knew about the farmhouse. The man knew what lay just beyond the trees, nearer the distant drone of traffic on the 34. And, as Croak so aptly put it, his father was on the council. Bingo.

“So we possibly have our why,” Adam finally said. “We just need our how.”

“How we get on the other side?” Pug asked.

“And I think I’ve got a plan to do that.”

7

Small town policing was a cluster fuck because the stereotypical Barney Fife expectations meant the extent of one’s aptitude was throwing the town glug glug into the drunk tank. Ned understood some of the big city migrants coming to the Creek for the ethanol subsidies were a breed unto themselves, so the department went from setting up speed traps on the 34 to watching the proliferation of Hollywood drugs marking the Creek’s veins.

“Holdren put the E10 council together around the time the first Corners showed up when ground broke at the plant. Before that he was officially headlining an environmental project called Mother Gaia with some funding from high rollers in the Club of Rome and donations from activists that was some sort of private equivalent to the EPA. Unofficially he was headlining Mother Gaia as eco-terrorists. Radicals who put out hits on guys like Norman Borlaug for their insistence on feeding billions with genetically modified wheat rather than starving a huge chunk of them and easing some stress on our resources.”

“Why didn’t the feds arrest him?”

“Because he couldn’t be convicted of crimes he didn’t have his hands in. Holdren had fall boys. He’s manipulative. He climbed the ladder at Gaia. On paper he was clean as a whistle. But he could pull the strings and make things happen. He acted his way to the top there, took care of executives on the board who would have opposed his form of leadership.”

“What do you mean, took care?”

There was a solemn look in Cole’s eyes as he looked toward the window before speaking: “He smeared his opposition. Paul Holdren’s a storyteller. Commanding. A presence. He was formally voted out of Gaia, but it was truly a messy ex-communication. Because he tried to follow Jim Jones’ lead in making martyrs of his movement.”

“What do you mean Jim Jones’ lead? He was, what, planning a mass suicide?”

“He had plans for his movement to lead by example. Mother Gaia was set up to inform about over-population.”

“How do you know all of this?”

Cole continued without answering Ned. Avoiding the question. “What town council is run by academics? In the middle of America’s cornhole? If you look at the stats here, if you look at the mortality rate in Reedy Creek before the E10 set up shop and the federal subsidies were siphoning corn for fuel harvesting, you’re seeing what can only be expected from so small a pool. Henry Stills was ninety-three and suffered cardiac arrest. That was two years ago. Mrs Wilma Haverstaff was a widower for eleven years before the ol’ kicker stopped ticking. Even farm accidents were few and far between; Jack Stevens lost an arm to a thresher. But he lived. Is still alive, but moved out to Ohio with his sister. When the E10 was set up and sprawl started turning a lot of the Creek into suburban offshoots around the distillation plant, deaths sky rocketed past the point of coincidence. Why?”

But Ned wasn’t expected to notice that; he was expected to stroll Main Street with the idle curiosities of one willing the day away until Johnny Carson and a brewsky, because purpose here, purpose in the flyover states meant little to the grand scheme of things. So when the bi-coastal thinkers came and, according to Cole, the death rate exploded, the not-so-obvious reasoning behind the numbers was supposed to be a result of a growing population pool from which Death could pick and choose. It was simple ratios. But one only had to look at the reasons behind the deaths, comparing them to the previous Creekers, and the things Cole were saying started making sense. Noticing something like a sheared brake line added fuel to the fire and the whole narrative could take off like gangbusters.

“Trevor Kramer’s in the E10, right? He came by the station yesterday. He and Andy met. They watched something. I couldn’t quite tell what, but it seemed important.”

“Does Trevor come by often?”

“Nope.”

“But he did the day of Wilson’s crash?”

Ned only nodded. The room was so dim Cole’s eyes mostly disappeared behind his lenses. He only contorted his brow and looked at the camera by the window.

“I wonder if it was footage of the accident.”

“Are you suggesting Kramer cut Wilson’s brakes? Maybe threw something into the street to surprise him, and the tape showed the son of a bitch doing it?”

“I don’t think he’s the type to get his hands dirty.”

“Then why? What’s with the theatrics? If Wilson was a heart attack waiting to happen, why stage—is that the right word?—a...a car crash? Why not wait and see if their prognosis is correct?”

Cole said nothing for a moment. Ned only stared at him. He wasn’t sure why he ever agreed to this sort of disloyalty to the Creek Police. Maybe at first he was intrigued by the mystery of this Paul Holdren fellow, a guy who apparently headed a multi-million dollar think tank until he was ousted for attempting to convince its core members to drink cyanide or arsenic or whatever poison fit his whim. For the cause. Then there were the surveillance cameras. That was another thing. Ned came to the Creek in 1985 because of a jilted relationship, and for the longest time he wanted to believe it was her fault. That their falling apart, their failure to make it, to give his mom some grandbabies, was the disaffection on her side that had pushed him away. But that wasn’t totally it, was it? A part of him had hoped what he had with her would fail, because that part had been denied by the forefront for too long. That part left him staring at Cole right now, staring at him as he looked toward the window pondering the why. Pondering the reason. This part had him wondering what Cole’s stubble might feel like against his palm, or what his breath might smell like first thing in the morning when one’s imperfections were abundant but splendid. Ned pinched the inside of his wrist. Sometimes the pain helped to snap away those thoughts. To push that part away. But in 1985 there were no cameras. Now there were so many Ned had lost count.

Cole had been watching the Saudi for a few months now. Ever since the man moved into the bungalow, tearing out the front steps to put in a ramp, and installing a satellite dish in the backyard that must have guaranteed free skin flicks from around the globe. He followed the Saudi to this place; he rented the home from the owner, a federal subsidiary leasing these properties to the Corners as they came and went. Ned looked at the photos. Whenever he asked the question why, Cole only told him to worry about Napolitano. If he was watching the E10 this closely through spies, then he must have had a network of them working in the Creek. Not that he’d ever asked the question. But a certain feeling of envy had crossed him when he thought about it. Cole must have had somebody in the school watching Andy’s wife and Principal Hector Perez. Somebody at the Health Clinic watching Norris Serkis. Cole was watching the ringleader, ol’ Holdren himself. And they all had something in common. Ned had never met a small town sheriff with a doctorate, but ol’ Andy Napolitano had the vocab to prove it. If there was any sort of prerequisite to get into the E10, the foot in the door policy mandated grad school. But the E10 had managed to get itself into pivotal positions of power in this town. Ol’ Andy hadn’t come from policing, and when the commissar had made him sheriff, there were skeptical and hurt reactions by those veterans who’d assumed the position was theirs. So the only assumption Ned could muster about leaving Holdren free to run the gamut of this town was in consideration of the finances that would put the Creek’s mayor into an estate on his own acreage. And Ned thought the old man in the wheelchair who lived next door had something to do with that.

“You okay?”

Cole looked at Ned. The silence was unnerving. “You ever think this is just some fucked up sociology experiment?”

“Huh?”

Cole shook his head. “Reedy Creek, Ned. We’re in a fishbowl looking out at the assholes studying us.”