Instinct by Jason Hough (best memoirs of all time TXT) 📕

Sean Dennis steps out and closes the door, but doesn’t cross to me. He looks to be about eighteen years old, rail thin and with a hawkish face covered in acne. He pushes a pair of well-worn glasses up to the bridge of his nose, glances at the tower and the equipment at its base, then finally steps to me and offers a hand.

“Mary Whittaker,” I say, shaking.

“Hi. Uh. Hello, Officer.”

His hand is cold, and trembling a bit. Instantly I’m on alert.

“Maintenance?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says, almost embarrassed. “Nothing’s wrong with it. Just the regular weekly site review.”

“On a Sunday?”

“I work weekends,” he explains. “Perks of being a newbie.”

I nod, and make a sweeping gesture toward the tower. “Don’t let me stop you.”

He seems reluctant to move, as if me watching him work is going to reveal some trade secret, which I suppose is possibly the reason. But I just stand there. After a few awkward seconds he moves to the back of his van and starts to rummage around.

“Tell me about this place,” I say.

“Okay. Uhhhhh, like, what do you want to know? I just started two months ago, so I’m not sure how helpful I’ll be.” He emerges from the back of the van with a satchel full of tools and one of those steel clipboards, but instead of a pad of paper forms it’s got a tablet computer attached to the front.

“Anyone but you ever come up here?”

“Not since it was switched on,” he replies, unlocking the small gate that leads inside the fence line.

“So it is on, then?”

“Well, yeah. Of course it is. For about a month now. Aren’t you getting better signal lately?”

I shrug. “I suppose so. Some people aren’t.” From his expression he takes this personally. I decide to go a step further. “Ever get a headache from working so close to these things?”

He squints at me, as if trying to decide if I’m being serious. “No. Why would I?”

“Some people claim it gives them headaches.”

The corner of his mouth twitches back, but he suppresses the smile before it fully forms.

“That amusing?” I ask.

Sean lifts his shoulders, lets them fall. “People say that everywhere. We heard all about it in training. Some techs have even been assaulted.”

“What, here?”

“Not here, just… in general.” He opens a panel on one of the boxes, checks some LEDs inside, then snaps it closed again. “I’ve seen people posting online saying, ‘The 5G is giving us all cancer!’ Thing is, you get way more radiation from the sun than any of this stuff. But no one wants to hear that. No one wants to know that there have been studies where they put people next to antennas that were on, or off, or some that weren’t even real. No one could accurately tell if the antennas were transmitting or not, at least any more than they could guess heads or tails. Still, people blame their headaches on these signals, not their bad diets and lack of hydration.”

The speech sounds a bit rehearsed. Something right out of his StellarComm training manual, I assume, or just overheard in the break room. Doesn’t make it any less true, though.

“What about bloody noses?”

He just shakes his head, amused and a little annoyed now, too, I think.

“Changes in behavior?”

At this he glances at me, and for the first time there is something like curiosity in his gaze. “Like what?”

“Like, say, making a successful lawyer and family man break into someone’s home and try to kill them? That kind of change in behavior.”

His face scrunches up. Complete bafflement. “Huh?”

“Don’t you watch the news?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Fair enough,” I say. “Thanks for your time.”

He offers a sheepish wave and returns to his tasks.

“Oh,” I add, halfway to my car. “You ever see anyone else up here?”

Sean Dennis shakes his head. Slowly at first, but then with more conviction. “Just you cops.”

I nod, turn away. Only then does the plural register. “Cops… more than me, you mean?”

“Yeah, that other guy, he was here once. Well, at the gate, leaving when I arrived.”

“Remember his name?”

Sean thinks on this a moment before finally shaking his head.

“Older guy, gray hair, bushy mustache?”

The kid squints at me now, still shaking his head. “No, younger, like you. Black hair. I think he was Mexi… sorry, Latino.”

“Same uniform as mine?”

“No. No. Like a dark blue, I think. I don’t really know, he didn’t get out of his car. Just waved at me.”

I frown, unsure what to make of this. “What about his car? Black, like mine?”

Sean shakes his head again. “White,” he says.

A state trooper, then. Odd they would have come up this far, but not completely weird. In Washington an officer of the law has full policing rights anywhere in the state, though agreements among agencies usually put some polite restrictions on that. As such they do usually check in with us when they come through on patrol. Could be they did just that, of course, only via a direct line to Greg. There’d have been no reason for him to let me know. I make a mental note to remind the chief he should insist they use the main station line, assuming they really are calling his personal number. “How long ago was this?”

“Uhhh… two weeks? Yeah. Two weeks, time before last.”

The same weekend Johnny Rogers died. Surely that’s a coincidence. I tell myself as much, at least. And it makes even more sense that Greg neglected to tell me a state trooper had come through, as we would have been too distracted with that investigation. For all I know the call is still sitting in his voice mail, unheard.

I thank the boy again and get in my car. Before leaving, on a whim, I jot down the make and model of his vehicle, as well as the license plate number. None of my “something’s fishy here” detectors are going off, but I’m not entirely sure I can trust my brain