The mustang’s tires barely gripped the snow-covered road as the car recklessly swerved around one last blind corner. Feeling the rear end shimmy, Justine wrenched hard on the steering wheel to overcorrect for the slide. Thankfully, the vehicle responded to her touch as its tires reconnected to the road.
“Jesus Christ!” Foster shouted over the GPS’s friendly reminders that they had reached their destination. “I didn’t know a car was capable of doing that.”
For the first time since leaving the motel’s parking lot, Justine allowed her right foot to ease off the gas pedal. Through streaks of mud and snow on the windshield, she could see a small gravel road to the right. Without waiting for Google Maps, she applied the brakes and eased her new toy into a driveway.
“Capable of doing what…?” Justine asked in a partial state of euphoria.
Foster remained silent on the subject as she depressed the clutch, threw the shifter into neutral, and turned the ignition off. The aftermath of the drive still roaring in his ears, he waited patiently for his teeth to stop rattling. “Capable of scaring the shit out of someone.”
Hoover laughed at his friend’s mistake. “It’s not the car that’s capable of that, idiot It’s the driver.”
“How in the hell would you know?”
“I wouldn’t know, not really. Besides, a after the first mile, I turned off the tablet’s internal gyroscopes.”
“Actually, “Foster imagined his own senses blocking out the last ten minutes of vehicular mayhem. He found such an ability something to envy. “That would have been handy.”
Oblivious to their insults, Justine turned to look at Foster with her biggest smile yet. Immediately, he flashed back to his time at Wilson when some of the manic depressives presented that same visage on their faces every night around pill time.
“So, what are we doing here again?” She asked, still buzzing from the mainline eight cylinders of euphoria. “We are on a timeline after all.”
“I know that.” Foster steadied himself for what was next. “And we’re here to see a man about a thing.”
Justine scrunched her face together like she had just sucked on a lemon. “What thing?”
Foster didn’t answer her question right away. Instead, he popped open his door and on unsteady legs extricated himself from the car. “I’m not exactly sure about the thing yet, Agent Rushing. But the man part refers to a certain, Deputy Joseph Howlam.”
“Joseph Howlam?” Justine ran over the last few days in her mind, searching for some other reference point for that name besides what had occurred in the patient’s room. She found herself coming up wanting. “Refresh my memory again. Who is Joseph Howlam?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out.”
Leaving his answer as cryptic as possible, Foster began to slowly make his way up the gravel driveway toward a small, shabby one-story ranch house. Shielded by a ring of snowy pines, it reminded him of one of those frontier forts that littered this region during the Revolutionary War.
Unaware or unmotivated by any actual danger, he quickened his pace. Up ahead, the house had a small porch with one cracked cement step partially attached to the main slab. He ignored the pitiful craftsmanship and bounded upward toward the weather beaten front door.
“Foster!” Justine’s voice bellowed from over his shoulder as he began to pound against the cracked doorframe. “Stop doing that. You don’t know who’s in there.”
“True,” paying almost no attention to her warning, Foster continued his assault. “But isn’t that the point of knocking, to see who’s home?”
“No,” Justine joined Foster on the small porch where she quickly discovered there was barely enough room for both of them to stand. “Generally, it’s better to know who’s going to open the door before you knock on it.”
“Not if you’re a Jehovah’s Witness. They don’t care who’s behind the door.”
“That’s true, Hoover. But Jehovah’s witnesses generally don’t try to kill the person there talking to.”
“No, you just feel like you’re going to die.”
“Talked to a lot of Jehovah’s witnesses, Hoover?”
“Just online, Agent Rushing. Just online.”
“You’re an idiot, Hoover.” She looked over at Foster who was still beating incessantly on the front door. “But I see where you get it from.”
Taking a deep breath, Justine noticed a large picture window to the right of Foster’s siege. Curious, she bent sideways to look inside. Unfortunately, a set of burgundy curtains blocked her attempts at spying on the interior. “But after yesterday, I would prefer a more cautious approach when meeting strangers.”
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“That would be a first for you. Wouldn’t it?”
Justine didn’t answer Hoover’s rhetorical question. Instead, she stepped down from the porch and began walking toward the nearest corner of the house.
“You can stop trying to wake the dead, Foster. There’s no one home.” She pointed back to the empty driveway. “Whoever you’re looking for hasn’t made it home yet.”
“Damn it!” He took one more swing which accomplished little more than creating a small welt on the side of his hand. “Hoover.” Foster squeezed his hand open and closed, trying to alleviate the pain. “How long before Saunders and Malcolm come speeding down that road to arrest me?”
“I deactivated their phone’s SIM cards, and I’m rerouting all the dispatch calls for the local tow services. So, unless they get lucky or start hitchhiking this way, we should have all the time in the world.”
“Then,” he jumped off the porch and landed in four inches of frozen snow. “We have time to look around
“The ‘all the time in the world’ line might have been stretching it, but… yes.”
Keeping Hoover’s warning at the forefront of his thoughts, Foster hurried to join Justine at the side of the small house. She was already making her move toward the backyard. When he finally caught up, the dialed in agent motioned for him to stay behind her.
“I know you’re excited Foster, but I need you to contain that blind curiosity of yours.”
“You know I can’t promise that.”
“Fine,” she said with an overabundance of exasperation. “Just remember, anything moving in front of me will be shot as quickly as this Slinger can fire. Given your theory, I’m inclined not to take any chances. Is that clear?”
Foster wanted to say something witty in response, but the look on her face warned against making such a foolhardy mistake. So, he let his shoulders shrug dismissively.
“Great.” She slowly traversed the last couple of feet along the side of the dwelling. Near the back corner, she signaled for him to once again stop. “Give me a second.”
With that, Foster watched her back disappear around the corner.
For a quick second, he half expected to hear the Slinger go off. After all, Justine loved shooting at things, and that predilection seemed to have only grown since introducing her to the idea of highly charged plasma weapons. So, it was surprising that after a minute or two of absolute silence, he heard her voice call out.
“Foster,” her voice was nonplussed. “You can come back. There’s nothing dangerous back here.”
The scientist craned his head around the corner to see her and her ponytail standing in the middle of an extensive backyard. Actually… the backyard was much larger than he would have expected given the limitations of the front. A couple of feet from where she stood sat what appeared to be a utility shed from a home improvement store.
“What’s that?” he asked, taking a couple steps in her direction. “A shed?”
“No,” Justine slid the Slinger back into her jacket pocket. “It’s a barn.”
“A barn?” Foster’s curiosity flared as he slowly trudged through the remnants of the last snowstorm. “Looks more like a shed.”
“No,” Justine raised a finger to point out the tell-tale door which accompanied most barns in the northeast region of the country. “I mean that this thing is a barn, or at least someone’s scale model version of one.”
As Foster drew closer to the building, the first thing that struck him was how correct Justine was in her observation. A little over six feet tall, this “barn” had been fashioned together by a meticulous hand. From the double-sided roof with little wooden shingles to the hand-carved divider slats, every detail had been recreated on a much smaller scale by a precise eye.
“That’s interesting.” Foster eventually admitted after circling around the thing a few times while taking more than a few pictures with his tablet. “Though I can’t figure out why anyone would want to make a model barn in the middle of their backyard.”
“Maybe it’s a huge dollhouse.”
“Dollhouse, huh?” Foster looked quizzically at both the structure and Agent Rushing. “I know you probably weren’t a Barbie Doll kind of kid. So, was it… Star Wars or Star Trek?
“Neither. I was always a Thundercats kind of girl.” Justine bent down to get a more level view. “I wonder what kind of barn it is.”
“What do you mean… what kind of barn?”
“Well,” Justine grabbed onto the main door’s tiny little handle. With a slight tug, the door slid open to afford her a view of the inside. Half expecting to see a long hallway filled with tiny little horse stables, Justine was perplexed to find the opening consisted of only a small alcove about a foot and a half deep. The alcove’s interior was sided with what looked like painted aluminum.
“I’ve seen horse barns and I’ve seen grain barns.” She leaned forward for a better look, but nothing else stood out. “But this doesn’t look like either of them. I wouldn’t even begin to guess what type it is.”
“Still,” Foster took one step back toward the house, having ruled this My Little Pony dream stable free of any real underlying meaning. “Seems like a lot of wasted hours to me.”
“Not if someone used it as a dry run.”
“A dry run?” Foster immediately stopped backing up. He looked from one end of the yard to the other looking for something he may have missed. But there was nothing out of the ordinary. “What the hell are you talking about, Hoover?”
“Is there still a line of trees to the rear of your barn/shed?”
Justine got back to her feet. She turned around and saw a thick line of fir trees flanking the rear of the house. “Yeah,” she said, answering Hoover’s weird question before Foster had a chance to chime in. “What of them?”
“Take a little stroll through them and tell me what you see on the other side.”
“A stroll?” Foster couldn’t see how this distraction had anything to do with what they were there to find out. “Hoover, we don’t have time to indulge your paranoia today. Or have you forgotten the government wants to throw me back in Wilson?”
“How could I forget that? I’m a conspiracy theorist.” His program responded quietly. “Just humor me, Foster. If the satellite images are close to being up to date, the whole walk shouldn’t take you guys more than thirty seconds.”
Justine stared at Foster, who presented the face of a parent whose child was pestering them into doing something silly and embarrassing. And like that parent, he gave in to the demand.
“We’ve got the time to indulge him.” He thought back to Hoover’s earlier warning. “We’ll just take a quick look then head back to the house.”
Not sure what to make of all this, Justine hesitated. “Are you sure?”
“Listen,” he readjusted his bag, then gave her a surprisingly earnest look. “Hoover may be a smart ass when it comes to a lot of things, but he’s my smart ass. If he says, we have the time. Then, we have the time.”
“Ok.” Justine smiled at how well they treated each other. Having friends, real friends, was nice. “But let’s make it quick.”
