“You need some kind of international investigation firm.”
“How much more international can a firm be than Gordian? Your website says you have offices in thirty-five countries.”
“But you also want to find out how the Roswell incident is connected to the Nazca lines. Don’t you want an archaeologist?”
“I’ve already talked to a dozen archaeologists,” Fay said. “They all thought I was crazy.”
“Besides,” Jess said, “Nana has been working on this for five years nonstop. She could have a PhD in the subject by now if she had gone to school for it. I bet she knows as much about the Nazca culture as anyone.”
“What do you want us to do?” Grant said.
“We want you to help us track down whoever it was that attacked me,” Fay said. “They have to have some answers about the engraving.”
“At the very least we have to know why they want the artifact,” Jess said.
Tyler’s eyes went to the engraving. “Did you show it to the police?”
“Yes,” Fay said. “They didn’t believe me. They think this is about something else.”
“Like what?”
“They said they think it was a pair of robbers who showed up under false pretenses to get the cash in my house.”
“How much cash?”
“I have a safe with a hundred thousand dollars inside. Part of Henare’s life insurance payout. I use the money to pay for travel to Peru twice a year to study the Nazca lines and their ancient city of Cahuachi. The safe’s fireproof, so it survived. The police think I must have told someone about it, but I didn’t. I have no idea how thieves could have known about the money.”
“Why would they burn down your house and chase us if they were looking for cash?” Tyler said. “Burglars would have bugged out when things got hairy.”
Fay shrugged. “I’m just telling you the police’s current theory. I’m sure it’ll change, but they said the investigation might take a while.”
“And we don’t have that much time,” Jess said. “More men could come back at any time.”
“Or never,” Grant said.
“Maybe. But until we find out what was so important about this piece of wood, Nana and I will be looking over our shoulders constantly. Even if she gives it to someone else, she may not be safe.”
Tyler sighed and looked at Grant. “What do you think?”
“I’m up for it if you are. We were going to take a few days off anyway.”
Jess and Fay looked at him expectantly. Finally, Tyler said, “All right. We’ll do what we can.”
Jess pumped her fists in the air. “Yes! I knew you wouldn’t let us down.”
“Thank you so much,” Fay said.
“The only problem is that we don’t have many leads,” Tyler said. “We’ll contact Billy Raymond and see if anyone has asked him about Fay, since the video seems the likely place where these guys heard about you.”
“I’ll get on that,” Grant said, and took out his phone as he left the room.
“We can take the piece of wreckage and the engraving back with us to Seattle for analysis in our lab. We might get some new info about the materials used.”
“We might want to put that off for a while and go another direction,” Jess said. “The phone call I took was from a contact I have with the police.”
“You have an in with the cops?” Tyler said.
“I still do occasional decoding work for them.”
“Do the police have a lead?” Tyler said.
Jess nodded. “Yes, they do, but they think it’s pretty thin. One of the tourists at Shotover Jet posted a video online of you three commandeering the jet boat. He also caught the men chasing you on camera. Apparently it’s plastered all over the Web.”
“Someone recognized Foreman and Blaine?” Tyler asked.
“So he claims. An Australian student at a Charles Darwin University extension campus. He emailed the police telling them that he thinks he saw one of the men last week.”
“Where was this?”
“At a research facility just outside Alice Springs in central Australia. The student’s name is Jeremy Hyland.”
“Are the police following up on it?”
Jess shook her head. “Foreman and Blaine’s passports had no stamps for Australia, so the New Zealand police thought it was just the ramblings of an overexcited kid, even though he provided a pretty detailed description of Blaine. They’re swamped with the rest of the investigation right now, so his lead is a low priority.”
“Why do you think he’s right?” Tyler asked.
“Because I called Hyland. He said he’s pretty sure he saw Blaine at his university facility. He was driving the car of a man who came to see their research.”
“Pretty sure doesn’t sound very sure.”
“He also mentioned that Blaine was missing part of his left ear.”
That got Tyler’s attention. He thought back to his fight on the jet boat and remembered Blaine’s torn left earlobe up close, just before Blaine was crushed against the rock outcropping, most likely mangling the evidence of the disfigurement.
But Fay had noticed it, too.
“That’s him!” she blurted out. “It looked like the lower part of Blaine’s ear had been ripped off. He must be the man the student saw.”
“And even better,” Jess said, “the student claims to have seen Blaine’s passenger just yesterday driving down the main highway through Alice Springs.”
“What is Hyland’s research about?” Tyler said. “Anything to do with Roswell?”
Jess shook her head. “He works on a project called CAPEK, or Computer-Automated Payload Extension Kit. It’s autonomous vehicle research funded by the trucking industry.”
Tyler chuckled. “They named their robotic truck after Karel Capek.”
“Who’s that?” Fay said.
“He’s a Czech writer who coined the word ‘robot’ in a play called R.U.R., which stands for Rossum’s Universal Robots.” When Tyler saw Fay and Jess’s surprise at his knowledge of this bit of trivia, he added, “Another work featured in my sci-fi course.”
Jess took the wood engraving. “Why are the men who are willing to kill for Nana’s artifact interested in a robotic truck in the middle of Australia?”
“I guess we’ll have to ask the researchers,” Tyler said. “And I think we should do it in person. We might be able to track down the man who was with Blaine.”
“I was hoping you’d say that. Because we’re going with you. There’s a flight to Sydney that leaves Queenstown in two hours. Then we can catch a connection to Alice Springs.”
Before Tyler could protest, Grant returned with a grim expression.
“What’s the matter?” Tyler asked.
“It’s Billy Raymond, the guy who shot Fay’s Roswell video,” Grant said.
“What about him?”
“Three days ago he was killed.”
PINE GAP
FIFTEEN
Starbucks hadn’t yet opened a franchise in Alice Springs, so as he steered the rented Jeep out of the city, Tyler drank a cup of truck-stop coffee strong enough to be used as an industrial solvent. He supposed that made sense, given the vast stretches of outback drivers would have to cross to get anywhere else.
Alice Springs was the largest town for eight hundred miles, and in the short time he’d been there, Tyler had sensed an independent nature that was likely characteristic of the 27,000 inhabitants. Despite its geographic isolation, the town was no stranger to strangers. Visiting ranchers, miners, explorers, and truckers making the long haul between Adelaide to the south and Darwin to the north were the lifeblood of the city.
Still, the group he was with surely stood out. Grant was next to him, with Jess and Fay in the back. The four of them together wouldn’t go unnoticed for long, which was why they’d kept a low profile coming into town.