Barbara promised to take me to Steven, but if it were truly him, what would he want in return?
I thought of what Deanna, Tom’s press secretary, had said: Is there anything controversial about your family that we don’t know about?
Holding information for ransom wasn’t the way of the Researchers I’d known. Intimidation, ultimatums, threats weren’t how they operated. They were misfits, outsiders, even reclusive about what they knew, what they had seen. They wanted no attention.
In my time among them, I’d certainly learned they had reason to be afraid.
I leaned back and rubbed my eyes. A late night spent staring at a computer screen followed up by hours fixated on microfilm made my eyes as dry as the winter air. They’d felt that way so many times as I sat at my desk in the astronomy department, reading case after case, only finding relief when my tears moistened my bloodshot eyes.
I’d been so thrilled to escape that desk and all those tragic stories when Steven had come to me, almost in desperation, asking if I was able to meet one of his colleagues in a remote rural area outside Springfield.
“It should be me going, but every spare second has to go to my course review. I suppose I failed too many students last semester. Dr. Roberts says it’s something important and he needs me to come tomorrow, and he doesn’t come down from Chicago very often.”
“Dr. Roberts?”
“Mathematics professor at Loyola University. Chair of the department. Rhodes Scholar. And one of us.”
I had calmly, almost indifferently, agreed to go, but under the desk clasped my hands together. I’d done my best to stay aloof ever since Steven kneeled dangerously close to me in his office the day I revealed the weather commonality of the disappearances. I didn’t like how I left his office feeling flushed.
I told Tom the truth—at least the part that I had to go to Springfield the next day for some research at the state capital. When he had failed to even ask why an astronomy project would require a trip to the home of the legislature, I knew he wasn’t paying attention and abruptly left the apartment.
I’d passed Decatur, rolling up the window at the smell of the cornstarch plant, and headed down I-72, finally getting off on exit 23. Cornfields flanked me on both sides as I traveled down a paved road.
About twenty miles north of the interstate, I saw the lights from police cars. Two squad cars were at the end of a dirt road, and three more were parked around a white farmhouse tucked on the edge of a tree line. An ambulance was rolling up to the house. I’d slowed, and one of the officers waved me on past. I’d hoped someone elderly hadn’t died in the heat.
Five minutes later, on that same road, I found the address I was looking for. As Steven had explained, there was the heavily faded navy-blue stripe on the mailbox, the number thirty-five, and the dirt drive.
Yet as I stepped out of the car, I saw the house clearly hadn’t been lived in for years. The windowpanes were cracked in several places and the roof sagged; it most likely was abandoned following one of the tornadoes that so plagued this area of the world.
“Mrs. Roseworth?”
I’d missed the pickup truck parked behind the house. A man leaned up against the bed. He was dressed in pressed pants and short-sleeved dress shirt.
“Dr. Roberts?
He walked out across the road, looking down in the direction I’d driven. His close-cropped white hair revealed skin splotchy with age spots, but he moved with a young person’s urgency.
“So you’re her,” he extended his hand. “You’re the one he talks so much about. Shall we be on our way?”
I was glad I wore a head scarf, or he would have seen that my ears flared an alarming shade of red.
“It’s nice to meet you. I thought we were meeting in someone’s house….”
“That’s the closest address that I could give to show Steven what I’d found. Apparently, no one lives there. Where we need to go is actually in the corn. You have on pretty shoes, but the ground is as dry as bone. They’ll get dusty but not ruined. I’d pull your car back beside mine; we don’t want to draw any attention from the road.”
I did as he suggested and then joined him in the corn. Once again, I was thankful for the scarf. I could already feel beads of sweat on my neck.
“Did you bring a camera?” he asked.
“A Hawkeye Instamatic.”
“Good. Steven will need to see on the ground what I saw from the sky.”
“Pardon?”
“I took some pictures from a friend’s crop duster this morning. He’s a photographer, too, and brought with him one of the photos we processed. But he can’t print all of them in time for you to take with you tonight, so it’s good you can snap some pictures while you’re here. I’ll send the aerial photo back with you, though.”
“Photos of what?”
“We’re almost there. I am surprised, though, that he sent a woman.” He turned around with a sheepish grin. “Forgive me. There’s not many of us of the female gender. But he obviously finds you capable, otherwise he wouldn’t have sent you. I should have known he wouldn’t have come.”
“Why?”
“Because of the cornfield.”
“I’m sorry, what’s wrong with the cornfield?”
Dr. Roberts took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “His sister, obviously. He still hasn’t gotten over it.”
He continued walking, and I hurried to catch up. “I don’t understand what a cornfield and Steven’s—I mean Dr. Richards’s—sister, has anything to do with anything.”
“You’ll see.”
We walked for another ten minutes, until the corn gave way to a clearing. The sunlight was blinding without the shade of the stalks. When I shielded my eyes, I realized it was no barren field.
Whoever farmed this land would soon come upon the bent stalks and ruined corn and most likely utter a litany of curses. The green stems and husks were pummeled to the ground for several yards in all directions. I knelt down, examining one of the stalks, seeing it was bent at a perfect ninety-degree angle.
“They’re all like that.”
I looked over to see a man sitting on an overturned bucket. The sight was almost comical, due to his immense size and how he somehow balanced himself on the pail.
“Lynn, this is Marcus Burg: pilot, ham-radio expert, and photographer. He’s the one who first heard about the missing boy. He’s also the one who found the circles.”
“Circles?” I asked.
“Crop circles.” Marcus held out his sagging arms. “You’re in the middle of one now. Points right to where—”
“Let’s let her look at the picture first, so she understands.”
“Steven told me a two-year-old boy was missing, but that’s all I know. How long ago did he disappear?”
“Two nights ago,” Dr. Roberts answered.
“Two nights?” I looked out towards the police lights at the farmhouse. “He could still be alive, just not found yet. He went missing not far from here, correct? Why would you think he’s been…?”
Dr. Roberts gave me a pitying smile. “It took me a long time to say it out loud as well. And I’ll admit, it’s even strange to say it now. Abducted. By extraterrestrials. The longer you’re at this, the easier it becomes to verbalize it. As you know, we typically don’t get involved until much later, when the cops are gone and families get desperate. But when Marcus told me what he heard on the radio and what he saw from the sky, I came down. And summoned Steven here, figuring he wouldn’t come. But I hoped, regardless.”