The deer had meandered through the woods, a long way from where they ended up, which was strange, as herds of deer meant does, and they usually kept to familiar locations, places where water was, and where they had already found grazing areas and grassy spots to bed down at night. Except in rut season. Which it was, but . . . herds didn’t run. Only does in heat, chased by bucks to win mating rights, ran.
I marked the site of the deer killings on twenty-five west, then the site where the guys had abandoned the search, four miles away on foot, but only about two as the crow flew. And from there, only a few miles to the pond. Had the deer drunk from the pond?
No one wanted this case to be an MED. MEDs were nightmares for law enforcement, something dreamed up by fiction writers at a think tank in Washington, DC, one created after 9/11 when it was discovered that thriller writers had already come up with scenarios like the bombing of the twin towers. Since then, there had been several possible MEDs but it had been impossible to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that the magical events were remotely detonated or equipped with magical timed detonation spells. None of the possible MEDs I had studied resulted in slow, encroaching contamination of wildlife or water sources.
I pulled up photos of the deer and noted that they were mostly does and juveniles. No bucks in sight. So why had they run? I texted Tandy, Look for reason why deer ran four miles. Chased? Dogs? Coywolves?
I got back a K.
Rick had said that a four-mile area was too big for a witch-working, and would have required hundreds of witches. He had said, “We would have noted that. Especially here in Knoxville.”
Why especially here in Knoxville? And then I knew. Secret City.
Secret City was a set of governmental and military research and development complexes, underground and aboveground, in and around Knoxville. They had a public face, in Oak Ridge National Laboratory, on property where the original atom bomb research was done, and the original uranium was made, for the weapons that had ended World War II. But today the government’s R&D and testing labs had spread out into Knox County, hidden in plain sight and powered by an energy grid that was equal to or better than any other in the country. Today the research was conducted by privately owned, government-subsidized companies that reportedly did energy research, propulsion research and development, radioisotope studies, and other complex studies.
The pond was only a few miles, as the geese flew, from the original lab at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where . . . where some of the information about psysitopes and the research on them had come from. Rick had to know this already, which meant he was about ten steps ahead of me in thinking that this might be more than a natural event. It was also why he didn’t want to consider this an MED until every other possibility had been explored and set aside. Because an MED here could be aimed at the government. Possibly a homegrown terrorist attack.
Then again, if one of the labs had a problem, and it accidentally caused the things we had seen, they might have fixed it already and not want it bandied about. And if the problem was already corrected, then it was unlikely that we’d ever discover who had done it or what had happened. It was also possible that a testing facility had an ongoing problem and it had gotten away from them, in which case they might be trying to keep it quiet so no congressional or military oversight committee started breathing down their necks. Also, if a lab was doing studies on paranormal energies, then it was top secret. And likely not something we would be allowed to continue investigating. Our case would be shut down. I thought about the woman’s voice in the deeps. About the dancer prodding the sleeper. If we were shut down, would the woman complete a working that would curse the land? Would the dancer eventually wake the sleeper? Something about that possibility left me cold and shivery inside, as if winter had taken over my soul, freezing my spirit.
Rick was weighing politics against the public good, against possible danger to the populace. At his security level he knew a lot more about what was happening than I did.
I decided to take this directly to Rick, and not trust it to a report unless I had orders to. I got up from my desk cubicle and poured two mugs of fresh coffee, carrying them to Rick’s glassed-in office. The doors were shut, but the blinds were open. I was guessing that meant that it was okay to disturb him.
I tapped on the window and went inside when he gave me a come-in gesture. I shut the door, placed his mug in front of him. He looked weary, drawn, the lines on his face deeper. There were gray hairs mixed in with the jet-black, gray that hadn’t been there when I met him. Rick was aging fast, which was strange for a were-creature.
I gave him a rundown of my hypotheses. As I spoke, he shook his head, set the half-empty mug on the desk, and leaned back in his desk chair with his eyes closed. I feared I had put him to sleep, but his face relaxed into a ghost of a smile and he asked, “What kind of reasoning led you to all that?”
I had been a smart-aleck about reasoning methods to the director of the FBI not so long ago. I was still being teased about that. “I observed and drew conclusions. Deductive reasoning, which links premises with conclusions or potential conclusions. Or, in this case, brought up more questions and observations leading to multiple potential conclusions. You gonna tell me if I’m right?”
“No. I will neither confirm nor deny your hypothesis regarding policy and potential research and development oversight by any governmental, military, or high-echelon law enforcement talking heads.”
Which was spook-speak for Nail on the head. There was a fear that we would step on toes of a quasigovernmental operation. That might get us shut down. But Rick didn’t tell me to stop digging.
After a silence that went on too long for social propriety, I said, “Thank you.” I got up, let myself out of his office, and went back to my desk, looking for government- or military-supported companies that might have research projects going on with energy particles. Or . . . I remembered the way the dancer had leaped and spun, like a puppy. Or a child. So . . . maybe I should look for a working that simulated artificial intelligence mixed with magic. At my security clearance level, I was looking at public domain records and things I could find on the web, on government sites and PsyLED’s intranet, and in social media. I wanted to focus on no more than five private and publicly traded companies at this time, but to do that, I needed to get a list of all companies within range of the pond and the deer, and then narrow the field by investigation and the process of elimination. I had been taught the basics of research, and this was a great time to hone my nascent skills.
I saved the CSM map to my personal file, labeled CSM-Nell, and drew a red circle on the laptop screen, a circle with a diameter that covered five miles, centered around the pond. In the radius of my circle, I came up with a dozen businesses and companies that might be possible suspects once I eliminated nail salons and pet stores and anything commercial or industrial.
I went back and made a new circle, same dimensions but with a green dotted line centered on the place where the deer were hit by the truck. Then another dotted circle, this one yellow, on the current location of Occam and Tandy, who were still tracking back along the deer’s paranormal trail, in the brush off Highway Twenty-five. Inside that circle, there were eight potential research companies. All were within ten miles of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I narrowed them to companies that did medical research, energy research, magical research, and ones that were black—meaning that the company purpose was a closely held secret and not available for public consumption.
There were eight such companies in close proximity to Oak Ridge. Such a close grouping of potential research labs seemed improbable, but I wasn’t going to go by improbability. I was going to go by facts.
By the time HQ heard back from Occam and Tandy, I had narrowed the possible R&D companies with possible government contracts in energy or magical research to: Alocam, Inc., LuseCo Visions, C-Corp Development, and Kamines Future Products, Moreare, Inc., and Zelco Corp. I had added in two companies who were black companies, Rosco J. Moose, Inc., and San-Inc.
When Occam and Tandy sent in the GPS location of the site where the deer had been struck with the working that contaminated them, I added it to CSM-Nell and realized that it was nearly lunchtime. Before I took a food break, I needed to move. It would take the guys half an hour or more to get back to debrief us, and I was sore and miserable. I had spent all yesterday in one position with roots in me. Last night in a strange, albeit comfortable pull-out bed. And today in a desk chair, stitched fingers tapping on a keyboard. My body ached and my fingers were sore and swollen. Only a few months past, I’d have kept myself limber and strong by working in my terribly neglected garden. Now I changed into a pair of warm leggings and running shoes, pulled a thin shirt and a hoodie over me, hiding the ten-millimeter Glock 20 in a spine holster and my badge, and tapped on Rick’s door, checking out for a run.
He nodded and flashed his ten fingers at me three times, telling me to get back in thirty minutes, and then he held his thumb and little finger to his head in the universal sign to take my cell phone. I held it up to show I had it, and left the building. I didn’t particularly like running. It was bad on the knees. It was bad for feet, even with expensive running shoes to cushion the motion, the landings, and the effect of gravity. But it got me out of the office and it was a socially acceptable form of exercise for law enforcement officers. As I ran, I cataloged the landscaping around the Allamena Avenue building and decided what vegetation I would bring to spruce up the ugly plantings. Then I headed out into the developing area to see what was going up nearby.
At the fifteen-minute mark, I circled around and headed back to HQ via a different route. Moments later I heard a car behind me and then pass me. It could be an unmarked police car, if the stripped-down ugliness was an indicator. Or it could be something less benign. Spook School had made me more paranoid rather than less.
The car stopped. So did I, about twenty feet back. My hand slid behind my back to the service weapon under my hoodie. The passenger door opened. I began to jog backward, seeing three possible escape routes, all without taking my eyes off the vehicle or my hand off the weapon.
Occam got out of the car and my heart rate eased back toward normal. He jogged in place as the car eased away. “Nell, sugar, it’s a beautiful day,” he called in his Texas twang. “May I join you in your predinner perambulation?”
“Why, I’d be honored, Occam,” I said, trying for the same formal tone. “I was just heading back, though.”
“All the better. I need a shower and a good tick check,” he said as we fell in together, feet slapping sidewalk. He slanted me a quick look, a playful glint in his eyes. “Not that I’m suggesting you do that for me.”
“Good thing,” I said in a mock-stern, prim tone. Banter was hard, cutting a thin line between flirting, which I didn’t know how to do, and sarcasm, which I also didn’t know how to do. Most girls grow up teasing with men. I had been affianced at age twelve to keep myself free from Colonel Jackson, the leader of God’s Cloud of Glory Church, when the old pervert demanded that I marry him. I had moved in with my fiancé, John Ingram, and his first wife, Leah, who was dying. I never had the chance to meet young men or to flirt.