Her home was clean and smelled faintly of maple smoke from a modern wood-burning stove in the kitchen. “Pollutes the atmosphere—it’s a carbon sin, I guess—but it comes in handy when the power goes off. Warms the house and I can make a pot of tea to pass the time. Would you care for a cup?”
We sat at her kitchen table while she waited for the water to boil. Because she was a Tau, we didn’t need to dance around the proprieties. She knew without asking that I was worried and I knew without asking that she was willing to help. She listened attentively as I explained the situation, twice asked me to clarify some detail or other, and when I finished she poured tea for both of us and doled out sugar and milk and sipped from her cup for a few silent moments.
“Big happenings for Schuyler,” she said eventually. “Huh! Aaron Fisk, local hero, junior congressman, friend to the beleaguered middle class—and raging asshole, apparently. So we need to find your brother Geddy, and we need to do it as soon as possible, assuming these Het folks haven’t already spirited him out of town.”
“I think the blackout might work in our favor,” I said. “Typically, Het enforcers won’t act without instructions from their superiors, and unless they have magic telephones, they aren’t getting any.”
“They might be working from some prearranged plan, no need for instructions.”
“They might. But as I said, Geddy’s not directly involved in any of this—he’s not even a Tau. Kidnapping him, if that’s what they’ve done, seems kind of, I don’t know, improvisational.”
“And even if the blackout does help us, it could end at any time. So whatever we do, we should do it as soon as possible. Which means we don’t really have time to appreciate a nice cup of Earl Grey.” She stood up. “Let’s go.”
“Go where?”
“I manage a store in Schuyler. It’s called Gizmos—you must have passed it on your way to the police station. We sell personal electronics, cell phones, coffeemakers, shit like that.”
“Sure, but—”
“See, there are twelve Tau households in Schuyler. More in the neighboring counties, especially Duchesne and Flaxborough—our tranches all party together—but twelve inside the city limits. We’re well connected in the community and we’re mostly long-time residents. We know the town and the people who live in it.”
“That’s great, but—”
“Hush and let me finish. I did the annual inventory at Gizmos just last week, so I know we’ve got at least sixteen pairs of two-way radios in stock—what you call walkie-talkies. Little Motorolas with a range of fifteen miles or so. You get one, your friend Trevor gets one, every ambulatory Tau in Schuyler gets one. Once we’re hooked up we can get coordinated, make a plan, do what we do best. How’s that sound?”
Strength in numbers. I felt a little surge of optimism, the possibility that this awful day might have a non-tragic ending. Shannon gave me a sympathetic smile. “We’ll take my car,” she said.
Chapter 20
Driving back from Gizmos with a trunkful of two-way radios, I shared a few more details about Jenny and Aaron and their relation to Geddy.
Shannon listened thoughtfully. “Well,” she said, “maybe these Het goons just screwed up. Maybe they wanted Jenny Fisk, but Geddy was the one they could get, so Geddy’s the one they took. My opinion, for what it’s worth? They’ll probably try to cut a deal. Give you Geddy in exchange for, I guess, not releasing the abuse video.”
“Either way, it’s an impasse until the blackout ends.”
“Because they can’t even negotiate Geddy’s release until they can talk to you. In the meantime, they keep Geddy somewhere we can’t find him.”
Geddy had never much liked traveling. He hated sleeping in strange rooms, rooms in which strangers had slept. That had been the worst of part of touring with a band, he once told me. All those ugly little beds in all those ugly little rooms.
“Well, hang in,” Shannon said. “This isn’t a big town. Unless he’s already gone, we’ll find him.”
We pulled up at her house. She offered to cook me dinner; I told her I needed to get back to Rebecca and Jenny and Mama Laura. She wanted to talk to Trev, who could describe the Het vehicles and maybe some faces. “He can contact me by radio,” she said. “And in the meantime—”
She didn’t finish the sentence. She was interrupted by a trilling that emanated from the left hip pocket of her faded jeans. Wide-eyed, she pulled out her phone. But the ringtone stopped before she could answer it. “False alarm,” she said. “Huh.”
But it was more than a false alarm. It was a promise and a warning. The engineers and IT geeks of the world were working the problem. Communications would be restored soon, maybe any minute now. For better or for worse.
It was dusk by the time I got back to my father’s house. Trevor came down the front porch as I parked and met me when I stepped out of the car. I told him where I’d been and what I’d learned, and he nodded approvingly when I showed him the two-way radios.
“Gives us a fighting chance, anyway. I’ll talk to this woman—Shannon?”
“Shannon Handy.”
“Living up to her name, seems like. You go on inside.”
“I need to explain all this to Mama Laura.”
“Jenny already had a talk with her. About Aaron. And the video.”
“I should have been here.”
“They don’t know about the Het troops, but they both figure Geddy’s been kidnapped for the purpose of keeping the video quiet. This is hard on both of them, especially Mama Laura. We need to be solving the problem, not explaining it.”
“I still need to talk to her,” I said.
But Mama Laura was in no mood to talk.
I found her sitting on the bed in Geddy’s old room, her hands folded in her lap, surrounded by the relics of Geddy’s early life: his old desk, his record collection, the faint rectangles on the wall where his posters had once sheltered the paint from sunlight. She seemed to be studying these things, as if she wanted to commit them to memory. She barely glanced at me as I came through the door, and the glance was contemptuous.
“You came here under false pretenses,” she said.
“Mama Laura, I’m sorry. What happened is—”
“Stop! Just stop.” She clenched and unclenched her small hands. “Jenny told me everything I need to know. All about Aaron. And what he did to her. And what your interest in the matter is.”
“We should have told you sooner.”
“Perhaps you should. Or perhaps I should have guessed. You know, when I married your father, I was a single woman with a young child and poor prospects. Joining this family—I can’t quite say we were welcomed into it—it seemed like Geddy and I had been delivered from a world of trouble. But that was wrong, wasn’t it? On the contrary. We were delivered into a den of vipers.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again, uselessly.
“You were smart to leave this town. I wish you had stayed away. Because, I don’t know who or what you are when you’re with your friends, but here? You’re just another Fisk, no better than your brother or your father. Maybe you pretended to be nice to my boy, but—”
“I never pretended.”
She shook her head. “Don’t try to excuse yourself. There is only one thing I need to hear from you right now. Do you know what that one thing is?”
“We’ll bring him home, Mama Laura.”
“See that you do,” she said.