“Caleb Epps.”
Agent Bradford gestured toward his left as he started walking, his two charges following him closely. “Welcome to Brettville!”
They approached the main road and Agent Bradford said, “This road runs all the way through town. If you ever get lost, though I doubt you will, just remember that it separates west from east. The town center is west off the main road. The only hotel is in the center of town. It isn’t big but it’s well taken care of. I’ve been staying there for the last couple of days.”
They crossed the road and Agent Bradford started to get his nerves under control. If he just kept talking and didn’t look back too often, he thought he’d be alright.
“I’ll show you your rooms. You can freshen up and we’ll get something to eat,” he said. “I’ll brief you then.”
Sparky’s Diner was owned and operated by Stevie Dowden. Everybody called him Sparky because he’d liked to play with electricity as a kid.
When he was thirteen he had managed to blow out most of the town’s power by siphoning it all to the supercomputer he was trying to build in his mom’s basement. The supercomputer had blown up, as had most of his mom’s basement, and ever since Stevie Dowden had unofficially gone through life as Sparky.
It wasn’t so bad as far as nicknames went, Sparky figured. In time he decided to cash in on the name and the fact that everybody knew him and started up his diner.
For his interior design he had opted for sharp colors, mostly white, with yellow lightning flashes painted on all four of the walls. The tables had laminated copies of the newspaper article explaining his nickname plastered on to them. Sparky’s little claim to fame.
When people asked him he assured them that his private projects were a lot more manageable now. The truth was that he hadn’t blown anything up in almost two years.
The three strangers at a table near the corner of his diner, Sparky knew, wouldn’t ask him about it. They were too busy shoving their papers around and exchanging uncomfortable glances back and forth.
Caleb felt that the tension at his table stood in stark contrast with the overall smooth atmosphere of the diner. Of course, he did little to remedy the fact. That wasn’t his job. His job was to watch over the young woman sitting next to him, browsing through the papers Agent Bradford had handed her.
Jane’s dark eyes scanned the documents at a rapid pace, occasionally halting and using her fingers as if to underscore certain parts of the text. In between she took bites from the hamburger that was slowly getting cold. Whenever she was done with a sheet of paper she moved it to her side for Caleb to read.
She told him, “Make sure you know what’s going on. It might be useful.”
With some dread Caleb took the documents Jane finished and pretended to read them. He could read, but at an extremely slow pace. The letters tended to jump around whenever he tried to focus on them, or they would blur into shapes that he couldn’t recognize. As a kid he had simply believed that he was retarded, but later he learned that he suffered from dyslexia.
Over the years Caleb had developed several coping mechanisms, most of them so effective that the people around him would have never guessed that he was a poor reader. He hoped to do the same now, pretending to read the papers and planning to gather the general information from the conversations they might have about them later.
Even Caleb’s pretend reading was slower than Jane’s actual pace and soon the young woman had piled up all the documents for Caleb’s benefit. She slurped her Diet Coke through a straw as she waited for him to finish.
When Caleb was done he piled up all the documents and shoved them back toward Agent Bradford. The man had sat quietly picking away at his fries up to that point.
Agent Bradford said, “You guys can keep those. I have copies.” Then he directed his attention toward Jane. “So… what do you think?”
“It’s good that you guys called. This is definitely something I can help with,” she replied.
“Good. What do you need from me?”
Some might have considered Agent Bradford as being to-the-point, a true professional in a situation where every lost minute was one too many. But Caleb knew better. He heard the understated dread in the agent’s voice, registered the uneasiness in his eyes. Agent Bradford was very eager to leave.
Jane said, “I’d like to speak with this Arthur Toaves first.”
“Alright. He knows you’re here.” Agent Bradford hesitated before he said, “I can take you there, of course.”
Jane let him off the hook. “Oh, no need. The directions were all very clear and it won’t hurt to walk through town a bit. You don’t have to come with me.”
Agent Bradford relaxed visibly and it was the first time he took his right hand out of his pocket. Carefully he placed both hands on the table and folded them into a pyramid.
“Good,” he said, “I have a lot of work to do.”
Jane allowed him this farce and gave him a careful smile.
Caleb distanced himself from the conversation. His interest was only in keeping his client safe. The air had not exactly cleared between Jane and the agent but at least their meeting was nearing its conclusion.
Agent Bradford gestured for the waitress to bring the bill. His movement was tense to the point of being strained, as if his muscles hurt from a hard workout the day before.
After the bill had been paid the three stood up and started toward the door. When Jane noticed Sparky watching them from behind the counter she said, “You be careful now! Okay?”
Sparky nodded with as wide a grin as he could muster. He loved it when strangers took the time to read his article.
Caleb left the sandy road behind him and trailed Jane toward the gate of the Toaves mansion. It was open, he noticed, which he thought odd.
Jane didn’t proceed. Instead, she walked over to the intercom attached to the left pillar of the gate and pushed the button.
A static rustle answered. Then a woman’s voice. “Hello?”
“Hello. Jane Elring here to see Arthur Toaves?”
“Yes. Of course! Is the gate not open?”
“It is. May we proceed?”
“Yes, of course! We will see you soon!”
Jane nodded and looked over her shoulder at Caleb. “I guess they were expecting us.”
Caleb followed his client along the road toward the large mansion looming in the near distance.
It wasn’t hard to imagine how a white family in Alabama had amassed this kind of wealth and Caleb wondered if he would be welcome inside. There was still a core group of militant racists in the South, he knew, and they sometimes had big money. This mansion, with its two wings, a big stable and a complex that could only be a large garage, screamed big money.
As they neared the mansion Caleb noticed a young girl leaning against the fence surrounding one of the fields that edged the left side of the building. Her dark hair and slightly tanned skin hinted at some kind of mixed heritage. She had Jane’s build, which told Caleb she could be no older than sixteen.
The girl called out to the two horses out in the field but they did not approach her. Did not respond to her luring sounds and seemed disinterested in the strangers approaching the mansion. When Caleb came closer still he noticed the dead stare in their eyes. As if the joy for life had recently been sucked out of their delicate souls.
Disappointed, the girl turned around and now Caleb noticed her bright blue eyes. They were captivating. Then he had inappropriate adult thoughts and forced himself to check them immediately. He knew that a man’s body sometimes had desires that the mind could not in good conscience allow.