Routine, really, probably leading to nothing at all. But something about this bothered him and he could not say what.
He drove back toward Mobile with the window open to the pine-scented spring breezes. To get back from Bayou La Batre, you turn north toward U.S. 90. But he kept going east on two-lane blacktop. At a Citgo station a huge plastic chicken reared up from the bed of a rusted-out El Camino, pointing to a Sit ’n Rest Restaurant that featured shrimp and oysters and fresh catch, the proceeds of the Gulf that had long defined Bayou La Batre.
The book that turned into the movie Forrest Gump was set partly around there and the whole place looked it. But Katrina and the hurricanes that came after, pounding the coast like an angry Climate God, had changed the terms of discussion. As if the aliens hadn’t, too.
He watched people walking into the Sit ’n Rest and wondered if he should stop and eat. The sunset brimmed the empty sky with rosy fingers, but he didn’t feel like eating yet. There was a bottle of Pinot Grigio waiting at home and he somehow didn’t want to see people tonight. But he did want to swing by the Centauri Center. The ones around here regarded everybody else as “farmers,” as locals along the coast refer to anyone who lives inland. Tough and hard-working people, really, and he respected them. They could handle shrimp, hurricanes, civil rights, Federal drug agents, so why should aliens from another star be any more trouble? At least the aliens didn’t want to raise taxes.
And he had taken this case off the board right away, back in Mobile, because it gave him a chance to go by the Centauri Center. He kept going across the long flat land toward the bay, looking for the high building he had read about but never seen. The Feds kept people away from here, but he was on official business.
There were boats in the trees. Two shrimpers, eighty feet long at least, lying tilted on their hulls in scrub oak and pine, at least half a mile from their bayou. Bows shoved into the green, their white masts and rigging rose like bleached treetops. Still not pulled out, nine months since the last hurricane had howled through here. The Feds had other things to do, like hosting amphibians from another star.
That, and discounting insurance for new construction along the Gulf Coast. Never mind that the glossy apartments and condos were in harm’s way just by being there.
Just barely off-road, a trawler had its bow planting a hard kiss on a pine. He drove through a swarm of yellow flies, rolling up the windows though he liked the aroma of the marsh grass.
He had heard the usual story, a Federal acronym agency turned into a swear word. A county health officer had the boats declared a public hazard, so the Coast Guard removed the fuel and batteries, which prompted FEMA to say it no longer had reason to spend public money on retrieving private property, and it followed as the night the day that the state and the city submitted applications to “rescue” the boats. Sometime real soon now.
Wind dimpled the bays beside the causeway leading to Mobile Bay. Willow flats and drowned cypress up the far inlets gave way to cattails, which blunted the marching whitetops of the bay’s hard chop. They were like endless regiments that had defeated oil platforms and shipping fleets but broke and churned against the final fortress of the land.
He drove toward Mobile Bay and soon he could see what was left of the beach-front.
The sun sparkled on the bay and heat waves rose from the beaches so the new houses there seemed to flap in the air like flags of gaudy paper.
They were pricey, with slanted roofs and big screened porches, rafts supported meters above the sand on tall stilts. They reminded him of ladies with their skirts hoisted to step over something disagreeable.
He smiled at the thought and then felt a jolt as he saw for the first time the alien bunker near the bay. It loomed over the center of Dauphin Island, where Fed money had put it up with round-the-clock labor, to Centauri specs. The big dun-colored stucco frame sloped down toward the south. Ramps led onto the sand where waves broke a few meters away. Amphibian access, he guessed. It had just been finished, though the papers said the Centauri delegation to this part of the Gulf Coast had been living in parts of it for over a year.
He slowed as the highway curved past and nosed into a roadblock. A woman Fed officer in all black fatigues came over to the window. McKenna handed out his ID and the narrow-faced woman asked, “You have business here?”
“Just following a lead on a case.”
“Going to need more than that to let you get closer.”
“I know.” She kept her stiff face and he said, “Y’know, these wrinkles I got at least show that I smiled once upon a time.”
Still the flat look. He backed away and turned along a curve taking him inland. He was a bit irked with himself, blundering in like that, led only by curiosity, when his cell phone chimed with the opening bars of “Johnny B. Goode.” He wondered why he’d said that to her, and recalled an article he had read this week. Was he a dopamine-rich nervous system pining for its serotonin heartthrob? Could be, but what use was knowing that?
He thumbed the phone on and the ME’s voice said, “You might like to look at this.”
“Or maybe not. Seen plenty.”
“Got him on the table, IDed and everything. But there’s something else.”
The white tile running up to the ceiling reminded him that this place got hosed down every day. You did that in damp climates because little life forms you could barely see came through even the best air conditioning and did awful things to dead matter. Otherwise it was like all other autopsy rooms. Two stainless steel tables, overhead spray hoses on auto, counters of gleaming stainless, cabinets and gear on three walls. The air conditioning hummed hard but the body smell layered the room in a damp musk. The ME was working and barely glanced up. The county couldn’t afford many specialists so the ME did several jobs.
Under the relentless ceramic lights the body seemed younger. Naked, tanned legs and arms and face, the odd raised welts. The ME was at home with bodies, touching and probing and squeezing. Gloved fingers combing the fine brown hair. Fingers in the mouth and throat, doubtless after probing the other five openings with finer tools. The ME used a magnifying glass to look carefully at the throat, shook his head as if at another idea gone sour, then picked up a camera.
He studied the extremities, feet and hands and genitalia. The magnifier swept over the palms and fingers and he took pictures, the flash startling McKenna, adding a sudden whiteness to the ceramic room.
The ME looked up as if noticing McKenna for the first time. “Wanna help?”
They turned the body after McKenna pulled on rubber gloves. A head-to-foot search, careful attention to the tracery of raised yellow-white marks that now had deep purple edges. The bruises lay under the skin and were spreading like oozing ink. The ME took notes and samples and then stepped back and sighed.
“Gotta say I just dunno. He has two clear signatures. Drowning in the lungs, but his heart stopped before that.”
“From what?”
“Electrocution. And there’s these—” He showed five small puncture wounds on both arms. Puckered and red. “Funny, not like other bites I’ve seen. So I got to do the whole menu, then.”
The county had been going easy on full autopsies. They cost and budgets were tight. “At least you have his name.”
“Ethan Anselmo. No priors, FBI says. Married, got the address.”
“Wounds?”
“The big welts, I dunno. Never seen such. I’ll send samples to the lab. Those punctures on the hands, like he was warding something off. That sure didn’t work.”