The Peripheral

55

Eyes closed, she didn’t recognize the sound of rain on the foam over the Airstream, a dull steady smacking. Eyes open, she saw the polymer-embedded LEDs.

“With us now?” asked Deputy Tommy Constantine.

Turned her head so fast that she almost lost the white crown, managing to catch it with both hands as it tipped off her head.

He was sitting beside the bed, facing her, on that beat-up little metal stool, in a black Sheriff’s Department jacket beaded with rain. He held his gray felt hat on his knees, protected by a waterproof cover.

“Tommy,” she said.

“Sure am.”

“How long have you been here?”

“On your property, about an hour. In here, a little under two minutes. Edward’s up to your house to get a sandwich. Didn’t want to, but he hadn’t eaten since noon and I told him it was the better part of valor.”

“Why’re you here?”

“Thing is,” he said, “strangers keep getting killed out this way.”

“Who?”

“Right on your property, this time. Down in the woods, there.” He indicated the direction.

“Who?”

“Young men, two of ’em. Your brother figures them to have been pretty much like him, or anyway like these boys he always has around. Who I am by the way increasingly unconvinced are just out here in the pissing rain all night, every night, for some kind of drone competition with their opposite numbers two counties over. Burton figures these two particular veterans to have been operators in the military, specialists, because they got all the way in under your drone cover, just like that, and would have made it the rest of the way if somebody, I’m inclined to guess Carlos and Reece, hadn’t been posted down there with rifles, the old-fashioned way.”

She was sitting up now, stocking feet on the floor’s polymer coating, with the crown on her lap, and it struck her how she and Tommy were sitting there, both holding stupid-looking hats. And how she really did wish, even in whatever this was about, that she had lip gloss on. “What happened?”

“They aren’t telling me.”

“Who?”

“Burton and them. I’d imagine, one thing being another, Carlos and Reece, with night-vision, took one look at those other two boys, who were also wearing night-vision, and shot ’em both dead.”

“Fuck,” said Flynne.

“What I thought when I got the call.”

“From Burton?”

“Sheriff Jackman. Who I figure your brother did call. Who called me, starting off by reminding me about our new arrangement.”

“What new arrangement?”

“That I’m not officially here.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I’m here to help out Burton. You too, I guess, but Jackman didn’t mention you.”

She looked at him, stuck for what to say.

“Why,” he asked, “if you don’t mind my asking, have you been sleeping, if that was sleeping, with some kind of sugarloaf cake on your head? And what, and this is what I’ve really been wanting to ask somebody for the last little while, the actual fuck is going on out here?”

“Out here?” Her own voice sounded incredibly stupid to her.

“Out here, in town, with Jackman, with Corbell Pickett, over in Clanton, at the statehouse. .”

“Tommy-” she said, and stopped.

“Yes?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Are you and Burton building some kind of drugs out here?”

“Have you been working for Pickett, all this time?”

He tilted his hat forward a little, to let a couple of little pools of rain roll off the plastic-covered brim. “Haven’t met the man. Haven’t had anything directly to do with him before. He gets Jackman reelected, so Jackman has ways of making it clear to me what’s Corbell’s business and what isn’t, and I do my best, around that, to enforce the law in this county. Because somebody’s got to. And if we all woke up one day and Corbell and that building economy had been taken up to heaven, after a few weeks most people around here wouldn’t have any money for food. So that’s complicated too, and sad if you ask me, but there it is. How about you?”

“We aren’t builders.”

“The basic flow of cash in the county’s changed, Flynne, and I mean overnight. Your brother’s paying Corbell to fuck with elected officials at the statehouse. There hasn’t really been much of any other kind of cash around here, not for quite a while. So pardon my jumping to conclusions.”

“I won’t lie to you, Tommy.”

He looked at her. Tilted his head. “Okay.”

“Burton got hired by a security company. In Colombia. Who say they’re working for a game company. They hired him to fly a quadcopter in what he figured was a game.”

Tommy was looking at her a different way now, but not like he thought she was crazy. Yet.

“Started substituting for him,” she said, “when he was up in Davisville. Now we’re both working for them. They’ve got money.”

“Must have a lot of it, if you can get Corbell Pickett to hop around.”

“I know,” she said. “This is all weird, Tommy. It’s its whole own level of weird. Better if I don’t try to explain much more of it, right now, if you’re okay with that.”

“Those four boys in the car?”

“Somebody fucked up. In the security company. I saw something, by accident, and I was the only witness.”

“Can I ask what?”

“A murder. Whoever sent those boys wants to get rid of Burton, because they figure I was him. Probably our whole family, in case he told somebody.”

“That’s why Burton’s got the drones up, and boys sitting down in the woods.”

“Yes.”

“And the two tonight?”

“Probably more of the same.”

“And all this money coming in?”

“The company in Colombia. They need me to ID the killer, or anyway an accessory, and I saw him and he’s guilty as shit.”

“In a game, you said?”

“That’s too complicated, for now. Believe me?”

“I guess,” he said. “What’s going on here with the money’s unlikely enough, I figured whatever was behind it wouldn’t be garden variety.” He drummed his fingers, very lightly, on the plastic hat cover. “What’s that thing you were sleeping under?” He raised an eyebrow. “Beauty treatment?”

“User interface,” she said, and lifted it to show him. “No hands.” She carefully put it down, still cabled, on the bed.

“Flying?” he asked.

“Walking around. It’s like another body. Wasn’t sleeping. Telepresent, somewhere else. Disconnects your body here, when you do it, so you don’t hurt yourself.”

“You okay, Flynne?”

“Okay how?”

“You seem pretty calm about all this.”

“Sounds batshit, you mean?”

“Yep.”

“Way crazier than I’ve told you. But if I get crazy about how crazy it is, then everything’s really fucked.” She shrugged.

“‘Easy Ice.’”

“Who told you that?”

“Burton. Suits you, though.” He smiled.

“That was just games.”

“This isn’t?”

“The money’s real, Tommy. So far.”

“Your cousin just won the lottery, too.”

She decided not to get into that.

“Ever met Corbell Pickett?” he asked.

“I haven’t even seen him, since he did the Christmas parades with the mayor.”

“Neither have I, in person,” he said, and looked at what was probably his grandfather’s wristwatch, the old-fashioned kind that only told the time, “but we’re about to. Up at the house.”

“Who says?”

“Burton. But I’d guess it’s Mr. Corbell Pickett’s idea.” He carefully put his hat on, using both hands.